Ingredients
- 1 cup shortening, softened
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon red food coloring
- Sugar
Directions
Preheat oven to 375°F. Mix shortening, powdered sugar, egg, and flavoring extracts. Add flour and salt, and blend together. Divide dough in half. Add red food coloring to half. Roll a 4 inch strip from each half. Twist together and make a candy came. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 10 minutes.
My Take
Okay, as I mentioned above, these did not turn out well at all for me. If you follow me on Facebook, you'll probably remember my rantings on these cookies via my status updates. The dough tasted great and all, but trying to keep it together, well, that didn't go so well. I think part of my problem was that I accidentally doubled the recipe 'cause I didn't realize my mom's measuring cup for dry ingredients was for 2 cups instead of 1. So I had to go back and double the recipe which meant I had to add more shortening to my already floured dough. So, that might have had a hand in the annoyances of these cookies.
Because the dough was so dry, I had problems forming the candy canes. I could kind-of-sort-of twist the two colors of dough together, but when I tried to put the crook into it, they broke apart. My first couple of attempts kind of reminded me of a third-grader's clay project or something. I mean, these things were huge and, in my opinion, ugly. :-/
So, I came up with another idea to put them together which involved setting the two colors side-by-side and then rolling them together into a "snake" and then manipulating it into a candy cane. That worked much better, but it was so time consuming and it was getting close to 9 o'clock at night, that my mom and I decided to just throw the 2 colors together, make it look kinda marbled, roll the dough out, and cut them out with candy cane-shaped cookie cutters. That worked much better, but it was still kinda hard because of the dryness of the dough. We also added more peppermint 'cause we couldn't taste the peppermint. I still can't, but my mom said she could.
So, those are my adventures with these candy cane cookies. Next year, I'm just going to make a simple sugar cookie recipe and add peppermint extract and do the whole dough thing. I think/hope that'll turn out better.
Lemme know what you think and if you decide to try this. If you get it to work, lemme know what you did differently (you know, like not accidentally double the recipe.)
Okay, as I mentioned above, these did not turn out well at all for me. If you follow me on Facebook, you'll probably remember my rantings on these cookies via my status updates. The dough tasted great and all, but trying to keep it together, well, that didn't go so well. I think part of my problem was that I accidentally doubled the recipe 'cause I didn't realize my mom's measuring cup for dry ingredients was for 2 cups instead of 1. So I had to go back and double the recipe which meant I had to add more shortening to my already floured dough. So, that might have had a hand in the annoyances of these cookies.
Because the dough was so dry, I had problems forming the candy canes. I could kind-of-sort-of twist the two colors of dough together, but when I tried to put the crook into it, they broke apart. My first couple of attempts kind of reminded me of a third-grader's clay project or something. I mean, these things were huge and, in my opinion, ugly. :-/
So, I came up with another idea to put them together which involved setting the two colors side-by-side and then rolling them together into a "snake" and then manipulating it into a candy cane. That worked much better, but it was so time consuming and it was getting close to 9 o'clock at night, that my mom and I decided to just throw the 2 colors together, make it look kinda marbled, roll the dough out, and cut them out with candy cane-shaped cookie cutters. That worked much better, but it was still kinda hard because of the dryness of the dough. We also added more peppermint 'cause we couldn't taste the peppermint. I still can't, but my mom said she could.
So, those are my adventures with these candy cane cookies. Next year, I'm just going to make a simple sugar cookie recipe and add peppermint extract and do the whole dough thing. I think/hope that'll turn out better.
Lemme know what you think and if you decide to try this. If you get it to work, lemme know what you did differently (you know, like not accidentally double the recipe.)
