It’s day ten of the Eats Amazing Advent Calendar and today I have another fun Christmas baking project to share with you – chocolate mint stained glass penguin cookies!
I’ve wanted to try making stained glass cookies for years but never quite got around to it. I decided to finally give it a go this year and because I can’t leave a recipe alone, I put my own spin on them – making chocolate shortbread with mint ‘glass’.
It occurred to me that these colours lent themselves perfectly to penguins (something of a theme for me this year!) and so my chocolate mint stained glass penguin cookies were born!
I cooked the first batch for 12 minutes, but the mints started to caramelise so the penguin tummies came out a little yellow. They were still delicious, but I tried a slightly shorter baking time for the second batch and they came out much better, so do keep a sharp eye on them while baking if you want clear tummied penguins!
Chocolate Mint Stained Glass Penguin Cookies
Ingredients:
- 125g unsalted butter
- 200g plain flour
- 25g cocoa powder
- pinch salt
- 60g soft brown sugar
- 2 tbs milk
- 20 glacier mints
To decorate:
- milk chocolate chips
- yellow and orange smarties
- edible candy eyes
Method:
Prepare the shortbread dough – cube the butter into a large mixing bowl, sift in the flour, cocoa powder and a pinch of salt and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Beat in the sugar & milk, then pull the mixture together with your hands and knead briefly until you have a smooth dough.
Wrap the ball of dough in clingfilm and pop in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.
While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Line 2 large baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
Unwrap the sweets, place in a strong freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin until well crushed. Slice the smarties in half for the penguin beaks.
Once the dough has chilled for 30 minutes, unwrap and turn out onto a well floured surface. Roll out to roughly the thickness a £1 coin.
Using a round cookie cutter, cut out circles of the dough and place them on the lined baking trays. Using a smaller round cutter, cut a circle from each one to form the penguins tummy and remove.
Fill the inner circles with the crushed mints. They should be filled to around the same height as the dough.
Bake the cookies for 10 minutes in the oven, until the mints are completely melted.
Take the cookies out of the oven, and leaving on the trays, immediately add chocolate chips to each cookie – 2 for the eyes and one for the beak. Leave to melt for a minute or so, then add a half a smartie and 2 candy eyes to each cookie – pushing them gently into the melted chocolate chips to stick them on.
Leave to cool until the mints have set, then gently peel from the baking paper and place on a wire cooling rack to finish cooling.
Once completely cool, store in an airtight container until ready to serve.
As I mentioned above, this post is part of the Eats Amazing Fun Food Advent Calendar. Every day from now until Christmas I’m sharing a new festive food idea here on the blog and I’m announcing them over on the new Advent Calendar page too, so do click on the link, bookmark it and pop back each day to see the latest new post!
Looking for more fun penguin themed food ideas? Check out our fun penguin marshmallows or these 15 fun penguin themed foods for kids!
For more delicious and fun food ideas for the festive season, check out the Christmas Food section here on the Eats Amazing blog or pop over and follow my Christmas Pinterest boards for lots more fun ideas from around the web; Christmas, Cute Christmas Food Ideas and Healthy Christmas Food.
Grace
These cute penguin cookies are a fun chocolate mint spin on traditional stained glass cookies - an easy treat recipe that's perfect for Christmas presents!
- 125 g unsalted butter
- 200 g plain flour
- 25 g cocoa powder
- pinch salt
- 60 g soft brown sugar
- 2 tbs milk
- 20 glacier mints
- milk chocolate chips
- yellow and orange smarties
- 40 edible candy eyes
- Prepare the shortbread dough – cube the butter into a large mixing bowl, sift in the flour, cocoa powder and a pinch of salt and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
- Beat in the sugar & milk, then pull the mixture together with your hands and knead briefly until you have a smooth dough.
- Wrap the ball of dough in clingfilm and pop in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.
- While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Line 2 large baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
- Unwrap the sweets, place in a strong freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin until well crushed. Slice the smarties in half for the penguin beaks.
- Once the dough has chilled for 30 minutes, unwrap and turn out onto a well floured surface. Roll out to roughly the thickness a £1 coin.
- Using a round cookie cutter, cut out circles of the dough and place them on the lined baking trays. Using a smaller round cutter, cut a circle from each one to form the penguins tummy and remove.
- Fill the inner circles with the crushed mints. They should be filled to around the same height as the dough.
- Bake the cookies for 10 minutes in the oven, until the mints are completely melted.
- Take the cookies out of the oven, and leaving on the trays, immediately add chocolate chips to each cookie – 2 for the eyes and one for the beak. Leave to melt for a minute or so, then add a half a smartie and 2 candy eyes to each cookie – pushing them gently into the melted chocolate chips to stick them on.
- Leave to cool until the mints have set, then gently peel from the baking paper and place on a wire cooling rack to finish cooling.
- Once completely cool, store in an airtight container until ready to serve.
Love this recipe idea? Why not save it to Pinterest so you can easily find it again!
Rebecca Lovatt says
These look so cute!!!
Grace says
Thank you, I’m so pleased they worked!
Theresa says
These are so fun! I am going to make some. I have been busy converting the measurements to U.S. I found a local store online that carries Glacier Mints which are new to me. How many cookies does each batch make? Also, how many inches is the large round cookie cutter? Thank you!
Grace says
Hi Theresa, I’m so glad you like them! I made around 22 cookies in my recipe, and the larger of the two round cookie cutters I used was around 3 inches across. If you can’t easily find glacier mints, any mint flavoured boiled sweets should work. I hope that helps!
Theresa says
It does! Thank you. For your U.S. readers, I found Glacier Mints at Cost Plus World Market. They also carried a Canadian version of Smarties as we don’t have the chocolate version (that I know of) here. I am going to make these tomorrow. : 0 )
ukuze says
yammi ! really amazing idea it would be fun to make with kids. thanks for sharing