Chocolate Peppermint Bars

These tasty morsels are the love-child of a peppermint patty and a chocolate shortbread. They are not terribly difficult to make, but it does require time.

First up is a chocolate shortcake. I read the comments on the NYT, and learned that they should bake 5 minutes less than the recipe - so only for 20 minutes. My shortcake was delicious, and not over-cooked.

Next up was a peppermint patty filling. This was a bit troublesome for me. The ingredients (powdered sugar, peppermint extract, butter, and heavy cream) were supposed to come together to form a "smooth paste". Following the recipe, I ended up with something significantly thicker than toothpaste. I added about 1T extra heavy cream, maybe a bit more than that. And it was still quite stiff. Nevertheless, I went with it, pressed it onto the (cooled) shortcake, and refrigerated an hour.

The final step is to temper some chocolate and put it on the tops and sides (it seals the peppermint filling in place, as well as tastes delicious). The recipe calls for 9 oz of chocolate. I used 6 oz, and I cut my cookies much smaller (100 cookies from the 9x9 pan). I had plenty, and still some chocolate left over.

The downside of making tiny cookie-candies is that putting the chocolate on top required a lot of work. Close to 2 hours. But these are impressive little items.