Last week (right? already lost track of time) I had a chance to see my friend Mary Kate, of Surviving the Food Allergy Apocalypse. In a rare move, we made cookies instead of getting Mexican. We combined recipes from two cookbooks, and ended up making our own alteration a bit as well, and wound up with cookies that are as minty and chocolatey as you would hope!

Ingredients:

Cookie:

• 1 1/4 cups Cara’s All-Purpose Blend
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons non-hydrogenated shortening
• 1 tablespoon nondairy milk
• 2 teaspoons unsulphured molasses
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Chocolate Coating:

• 1 cup vegan gluten-free chocolate chips
• 1 to 2 tablespoons mint extract

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment and set aside.

Mix all the cookie ingredients together in a medium bowl until it mostly sticks together.

Turn it out onto a piece of parchment paper and knead it together until it sticks.

It’s a very dry dough…

Roll out between 2 pieces of parchment to about 1/8″ thick.

Cut with a 2″ cookie cutter. The only thing remotely the right size we could find was a lid to some dessert topping, but it worked okay.

Place the cookies on the lined sheet, and bake 10-12 minutes. Set aside to cool fully.

When the cookies have cooled, combine the chocolate chips and 1 tablespoon of mint extract, and carefully melt the chips until the mixture and be stirred smooth. Taste it, and add additional mint 1/2 tablespoon at a time, as desired. The original recipe said to use 3 tablespoons, but Mary Kate had already written a note in her book to just use 2. We started off with 2, but ended up having to “water down” the mixture with additional chocolate, because the mint was so strong it was unpleasant.

Spread the chocolate mixture onto each cookie, then place the cookies in a single layer on a platter, or back on the pan, whatever you can fit in your refrigerator for 30 minutes to let the chocolate set.

Minty!

Vegan/Gluten-Free Thin Mints

Cookies from Decadent Gluten-Free Vegan Baking, topping adapted from BabyCakes Covers the Classics.

Cookie:

• 1 1/4 cups Cara’s All-Purpose Blend
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons non-hydrogenated shortening
• 1 tablespoon nondairy milk
• 2 teaspoons unsulphured molasses
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Chocolate Coating:

• 1 cup vegan gluten-free chocolate chips
• 1 to 2 tablespoons mint extract

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment and set aside.

Mix all the cookie ingredients together in a medium bowl until it mostly sticks together, then turn it out onto a piece of parchment paper and knead it together until it sticks. Roll out between 2 pieces of parchment to about 1/8″ thick, then cut with a 2″ cookie cutter. Place the cookies on the lined sheet, and bake 10-12 minutes. Set aside to cool fully.

When the cookies have cooled, combine the chocolate chips and 1 tablespoon of mint extract, and carefully melt the chips until the mixture and be stirred smooth. Taste it, and add additional mint 1/2 tablespoon at a time, as desired. Spread the chocolate mixture onto each cookie, then place the cookies in a single layer on a platter, or back on the pan, whatever you can fit in your refrigerator for 30 minutes to let the chocolate set.