Candy Cane Kiss Chocolate Chip Cookies

Warm chocolate chip cookies filled with refreshing bits of candy cane kisses in every bite. Swirls of red and white candy cane kisses add festive colors to the classic chocolate chip cookies, perfect for the holidays.  

I’m on a peppermint craze, especially with Christmas coming up in a few days. Lately, all my recipes and desserts have been filled with peppermint and chocolate. I’ve been working on cookies and other baked goods to give away to friends and family and this is a relatively simple recipe that you can try too.

Who doesn’t love chocolate and peppermint together? It’s the perfect combination of flavors and a twist to the classic chocolate chip cookies. They’re bite size chocolate chip cookies with bits of Candy Cane Kisses that fill your taste buds with the refreshing hint of peppermint as well as add festive holiday colors of red and white. If you’re a fan of peppermint, then you’ll definitely have to try these cookies.

One of the first things you should do before baking is check if there are ingredients you need to take out from the refrigerator. In this case, the butter and the egg. Leave them out for about an hour or so. That way they will be at room temperature by the time you use them. If there’s not enough time, you can also cut the butter into smaller pieces so that it will warm up to room temperature faster.

Next, combine all the dry ingredients together. In a large bowl, add flour and baking powder, and mix until even. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat the butter until it becomes creamy then add the brown sugar. Once the butter and the sugar are evenly mixed, beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Pour the dry ingredients slowly into the wet ingredients, mixing as you go. Continue to mix until a soft dough forms. The dough will be a little bit dry and there will be loose flour at the bottom of the bowl. Add milk, one tablespoon at a time up to 3 tablespoons, beating and mixing the dough until it becomes soft.

Add in the chocolate chips and mix until evenly incorporated.

Chop up about 18-20 Candy Cane Kisses to form about a ½ cup of candy cane kiss bits. It doesn’t have to very small. You want small chunks in the batter too, around the size of chocolate chips.

Aren’t the colors so pretty and festive? These Candy Cane Kisses contain red sprinkles too so the cookies will taste as if you added sprinkles.

Add candy cane bits into the batter and mix until evenly distributed.

Preheat the oven to 350^oF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Roll about 1.5 tablespoons of dough into balls. They don’t have to completely round. I actually like my cookies a little misshapen sometimes so I sometimes built the dough upwards instead of perfect round balls.

Bake each batch of cookies for about 10-12 minutes. Take them out of the oven and allow them to cool for 5 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack.

This recipe creates about 2 dozen cookies. Sometimes, when I roll my dough into balls, they are different sizes as you can see in the photo above. So the recipe can make more or less depending on the size of the cookie dough balls.

These cookies will be perfect for Christmas parties or as gifts for family and friends. Or if you’re me, I continuously “try” them to see how they taste. Enjoy! And have a happy holidays!

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