Thin Mint Cookies

• Ingre­di­ents
• The cook­ies!
• 2 cups all-pur­pose flour
• ¹⁄₂ cup unsweet­ened cocoa powder
• ¹⁄₂ tsp. salt
• 1 cup unsalt­ed but­ter, softened
• ⅔ cup gran­u­lat­ed sugar
• 1 large egg white
• 1 tsp. vanil­la extract
• ¹⁄₂ tsp. pep­per­mint extract
• The choco­late coating!
• ³⁄₄ cup semi-sweet choco­late morsels, melt­ed (or melt­ing wafers)
• ¹⁄₄ tsp. pep­per­mint extract

Directions

The cookies:

In a medi­um bowl, com­bine the flour, cocoa pow­der, and salt. Stir with a whisk; set aside.

Using a stand mix­er fit­ted with the pad­dle attach­ment or with a hand-held mix­er, beat the but­ter and sug­ar togeth­er on medi­um speed until smooth and creamy, about 3 minutes.

Beat in the egg white fol­lowed by the vanil­la and pep­per­mint extract. The dough may appear cur­dled; this is nor­mal. Grad­u­al­ly add the flour in 3 addi­tions, beat­ing just until incor­po­rat­ed after each one. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Divide the dough in half.

Work­ing with one half at a time, place the dough between two pieces of parch­ment paper and roll it to a ¹⁄₄ inch thick­ness. Leav­ing the dough in between the parch­ment paper, trans­fer it to a bak­ing sheet. It’s okay to stack the slabs of rolled dough since they’re sep­a­rat­ed by the parch­ment paper.

Refrig­er­ate for at least 3 hours or freeze it for 1 hour.

Pre­heat the oven to 350°F.

Line two bak­ing sheets with parch­ment paper.

Remove the top lay­er of parch­ment paper and cut cir­cles with a 2‑inch cook­ie cut­ter or a sim­i­lar­ly-sized cup or glass.

Place the cook­ies on the pre­pared bak­ing sheets about 1 ¹⁄₂ inch­es apart. Gath­er the scraps of dough, reroll and chill to con­tin­ue cut­ting and baking.

Bake for 15 to 18 min­utes, until the cook­ies feel firm to the touch. Cool on the bak­ing sheet for 5 min­utes before trans­fer­ring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

The chocolate coating:

Com­bine the choco­late, and extract in a medi­um heatproof bowl set over a pot of bare­ly sim­mer­ing water. Stir con­tin­u­ous­ly until melt­ed and smooth.

Using a fork, dip each cook­ie into the melt­ed choco­late, turn­ing to coat and tap­ping off any excess. Place cook­ies onto a parch­ment-lined bak­ing sheet. Refrig­er­ate the cook­ies until set, about 10 minutes. 

Once the choco­late nice and cool and firm, trans­fer the cook­ies to an air­tight con­tain­er and put them in the freez­er. (All God-fear­ing right-think­ing peo­ple under­stand that Thin Mints must be eat­en right out of the freez­er, so if you don’t put them in the freez­er you’re a Very Bad Person!)