Cranberry Orange Oatmeal Cookies

Are you sick of all my cookie recipes yet?  I hope not, because I still have a few more for you!  Around the Holidays I tend to focus on making cookies, especially drop cookies since I bring cookie plates to parties and like to gift out cookie plates or bags of cookies to friends and family.

I was searching for a recipe for Cranberry White Chocolate Oatmeal cookies and I stumbled upon this recipe for Cranberry Orange Oatmeal Cookies.  I thought I would use this recipe, add some white chocolate chips, and hopefully have an amazing cookie.  Although I left out the white chocolate in the end, these cookies are still tasty and a refreshing change from the mint chocolate and peanut butter cookies I've been making.

I didn't have a zester when I made this recipe, so instead I use a mini cheese grater to get the zest off of citrus and it seems to work just fine.  I actually like that I get larger pieces of the zest since it gives the cookies a unique appearance.  

Dark Chocolate Mint Cookies

Yep, another cookie recipe!  This is another good one though, especially if you like mint and dark chocolate.

Since I live near Tacoma, I'm lucky enough to have access to the Brown and Haley Factory Outlet, which has discounted Almond Roca (all flavors!) and Factory Seconds.  Around the holidays I get really excited for the factory seconds because they cost a lot less than the regular Roca and it's just a cosmetic flaw that makes them sell for a reduced price.  Usually it's a wrapper mishap, but if I just take off all the wrappers then put them in a different bag or bowl then they're ready for consuming and I've saved a couple bucks!

I wasn't planning on going to the outlet this year since I was planning on doing tons of cookie baking to gift and didn't think that the extra candy was necessary, but my coworker went and brought back a pack of these:

These are Dark Chocolate Peppermint Chunks.  Chunks may not sound appealing, but my coworker let us try them and they are delicious!  I love mint and chocolate, so I had to go to the outlet during my lunch break and pick some up.  At 75 cents a pack, I had to pick up 3 packs and I'll probably stop by next week and get some more!

The first thing that came to mind for me was to use a Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (this is the recipe I used, but any recipe will do) and use the peppermint chunks instead of chocolate chips.  I followed my usual Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe except added some green food coloring to the batch to clue everyone in that it's mint flavored instead of tricking them into eating mint (it's hard to believe, but some people actually don't like mint!).  In addition to the food coloring, I added some green sugar sprinkles to the batch to add flecks of dark green.  The green food coloring probably isn't necessary if you're only making one batch, but since I was putting these on a cookie plate I thought it was important so people know what to expect.

I had considered adding more peppermint or mint extract, but in the end I'm glad I didn't because these have just a sweet hint of mint instead of being overpowering.  I think it is the perfect balance as-is, but if you like super minty stuff you can add a little extract.