Mint Chocolate Chip Layer Cake

Triple layer chocolate cake with mint frosting and Andes mints for any mint chocolate fan in your life!

This was my oldest son's pick for a birthday cake in 2020 - he loves mint chocolate chip ice cream and I want to say he's almost chosen this cake multiple years in a row and then finally last year, he did choose it. It was relatively simple to make. I know it's going to be a perfect chocolate cake when there's boiling water to add to the batter. I'm not sure what science is behind that but it is always SO good. I have nothing much else to say about this one - it's a 10 out of 10!

Oreo Peppermint Crunch Cookies

Soft and chewy cake mix cookies with bits of Oreos and candy canes inside

These were Santa's cookies last year and survived a road trip to Florida and a few days in a really small, cramped airbnb. They almost didn't survive due to the fact that they are insanely good. They are cake mix cookies with Oreos and candy canes in them and they are the absolute best. They are chewy and crunchy and so good.

Peppermint Poke Cake

This holiday cake is so easy to make and loaded with chocolate and peppermint!

I think box cake mixes are awesome and I love how you can add a few more steps and change it up completely. I think at this point everyone knows what a poke cake is - you make a cake and poke holes in it and then pour stuff on top. This cake is topped with sweetened condensed milk and hot fudge. After some chilling, the cake is topped with whipped cream and other stuff - in this case, Andes mints and Oreos. I think this is my favorite poke cake of all the ones I've made. I love mint chocolate, so I guess it's not surprising. This is a really fun cake to make with kids (if you have any around) and is perfect for the holidays!

Peppermint Hot Cocoa Pancakes

These pancakes are perfect for the winter season - and especially Christmas morning!

For the first time in a long time, I don't have a plan for Christmas morning breakfast. Sometimes I wake up really early and make cinnamon rolls. I've made donuts and casseroles. Last year, I made these pancakes. They were a huge hit and super quick. The kids enjoyed them after opening presents and I have to say that they were pretty fantastic. All the elements work together so well!

Candy Cane Crinkles

The perfect peppermint cookie for the winter season that just melt in your mouth!

Every year, the kids and I choose a cookie recipe off my cookie board on Pinterest to make for Santa. Even though my big kids are of the "knowing age", they still love this tradition and are really excited to continue it with their little brother who will have his first big Christmas where he understands what is going on other than just presents. I think we're going to have his first visit to Santa which will be really exciting.

I'm not sure what cookie we will make this year, but last year, these Candy Cane Crinkles were the chosen cookie for Santa. They are buttery and melt-in-your-mouth with the cool bite of peppermint. They don't look like anything more than sugar cookies, but they are so fantastic. Don't underestimate them! Also, I don't know if every place will carry them but I discovered crushed candy canes at my local grocery store (Kroger) this past week and I was so excited. Crushing candy canes is one of my least favorite tasks to do and I love that they now have precrushed candy canes! Perfect for cookies!

Mint Oreo Brookies #FantasticalFoodFight

Welcome to another Food Fight! Fantastical Food Fight is a group of food bloggers who will get a theme or ingredient each month and make some sort of variation for it. It could be traditional or nontraditional and can be found in a cookbook, on a blog, or be a blogger's own creation! For more details, check out this page.

This month's Fantastical Food Fight theme is MINT CHOCOLATE. With March almost upon us, I figured mint chocolate would be the perfect theme for the month where St. Patrick's Day is celebrated and green food rules! I personally have not had a lot of mint chocolate in a while because I was told not to eat peppermint or chocolate when I had my second SVT episode (I blogged about my journey on my personal blog, if you're interested, but basically it's an arrhythmia where your heart beats super fast. My record is slightly over 250 bpm). However, it's been almost a year since my surgery to correct it, so I am pretty sure I'm allowed to eat whatever now. No restrictions on life. These brookies were the perfect way to enjoy one of my favorite flavor combinations again.

I have to admit that I am not actually too big a fan of Oreos, but I do like treats with Oreos in them. Cookies and cream is actually probably my favorite ice cream flavor now as an adult and any kind of cookies and cream dessert is going to be a favorite of mine for sure. These brownies are oh so fudgy and the bits of mint Oreos were so so so perfect in them. I am so excited to see what other fantastically delicious mint chocolate recipes are shared today. I'm ready for more treats like this! In moderation, of course :)

Reindeer Food

If you are ready for the most addictive winter holiday snack, look no further!

I think I have found a new tradition in this Reindeer Food recipe. We have made it for the past two years and we love it! Matthew is already asking if I'm going to be making another batch this year because this year's batch lasted all of a night and then it was gone! It's ridiculously easy - with only three ingredients - and it's pretty quick to make too. My family loves to help make it because it boils down to stirring and crushing and the kids and Nick like doing those things! LOL

I'm not kidding at all when I say this is super addictive. We could not even let it set up before we were eating it. And it's so hard to not continue to eat it once you've started. I do suppose this is supposed to be for Santa's reindeer, but sorry, Rudolph, guess we're just going to leave you a carrot this year!

Peppermint Hot Cocoa Crunch Donuts

Why not enjoy a little sweet breakfast with candy canes, chocolate, and marshmallows?!

Each year, I try to make a really good breakfast for Christmas morning. I typically make cinnamon rolls and wake up way too early to do it, so last year I wanted something simpler. My kids love donuts and I knew that peppermint chocolate ones with marshmallows would be really special for them. I thought they were pretty fantastic too. I loved the chocolate donut with slight peppermint flavor added to it and the chocolate glaze too! The glaze was wonderful.

Junior Mint Cupcakes #Choctoberfest

These aren't your ordinary cupcake - just like the candy on top, the cupcake has a sweet mint filling!

I talked about my kids choosing their birthday cakes each year yesterday, but I also had to share these adorable cupcakes that I made for my mom's birthday last November (last year). I do typically pick out cakes for the adult family members based on what I think they will love. My mom loves Junior Mints and has always loved them, so when I found the recipe, I saved it immediately. I knew it would be perfect. I tend to find recipes months in advance and then it's just a waiting game to make them.

These are relatively easy cupcakes that start out with a boxed cake mix with some extra goodness added to it. The mint buttercream is perfect, but what takes the cake is the insanely amazing mint filling! It tastes exactly like the candy's mint filling and it's such a surprise when you bite into the cupcake.

Since it's the last day of Choctoberfest, I just wanted to say thank you to Allison of The PinterTest Kitchen for hosting once again and hope y'all have found some lovely recipes from my fellow bloggers. Each day of the week that I posted a chocolate recipe, you'll find a blog hop at the bottom with tons of chocolately amazingness linked up!

Andes Mint Cake #Choctoberfest

From cake mix to this mint-filled, chocolate mint buttercream-frosted, ganache-covered chocolate cake to beat all cakes

Every year, I let my kids pick out the cake they want for their birthday. Each year, Matthew and Cami pick out recipes from my Pinterest board and then go through a process of elimination until they reach the final recipe. I am pretty sure this Andes Mint Cake has been on their list every single year since we started the tradition. It never ends up being the last cake standing, but I decided to go ahead and make it in a non-birthday month. I just figured that even though it was in their top cakes, we'd probably never get around to having it unless I picked it.

I have always been a huge fan of Andes Mints. I think they are just absolutely wonderful and I have used them in plenty of desserts. This cake is made from devil's food cake mix and you can do two or three layers. I personally did two because I was being a little lazy. There is a mint filling between the chocolatey layers and then it's covered in a chocolate mint buttercream frosting and a row of Andes mints around the bottom. To top it all off, the extra touch of chocolate ganache and chopped mints is just divine. I have been so in love with ganache lately because it's just so decadent and amazing. It makes every dessert better.

Peppermint Kiss Sugar Cookies

These festive little "blossom" cookies are perfect for the winter season!

My mom makes peanut butter blossom cookies pretty much every year for Christmas and I love them. I love finding similar recipes to my favorite classics. I always buy the candy cane kisses because they are so good to put in hot coffee or hot cocoa. Seriously delicious - if you haven't tried it, you have to! So I already knew these little kisses were amazing and I thought the combination of candy cane and sugar cookies and chocolate would be delicious. My cookies ended up a little more crumbly looking than Alyssa's, but still were very very good. I think I may have just ended up rolling the cookie dough balls too large. No biggie.

Dark Chocolate Mint Cake Mix Cookies #Cookielicious #SundaySupper

Fudgy, chewy cookies with loads of chocolate and mint in every bite - and only need 4 ingredients. These decadent treats are sure to be a hit during the holiday season!

I have been working on trying to develop my own recipes and really I stick to what I know...cookies and copycat dishes. I'm fairly decent at coming up with recipes for those two things. Last winter, I made 3 cookie recipes and this was by far my very favorite. I grabbed a bag of limited edition Winter Dark Chocolate & Mint morsels again this year to make these again. Matthew tells me they were Santa's favorite cookies out of all the ones we've made him. I think he may be onto something there :)

I love to make cookies from cake mix and with instant pudding. Both kinds turn out soft and chewy - which is how I like my cookies. I went with fudge cake mix because it is rich and more chocolatey and you have to have that for these cookies. You really do!

Mint Cookies & Cream Ice Cream

Last year for my birthday, I got an ice cream maker and Ben & Jerry's cookbook from Nick. Ecstatic doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. I love ice cream and have wanted the attachment for my KitchenAid for FOREVER. I just didn't want to spend the money.

Now that the weather is warm again, I have made a few batches. This batch happened to be the first one I made in my ice cream maker [last September]. Ben & Jerry say that it was one of their best selling flavors and I know exactly why. Mint [chocolate chip] ice cream is unbelievable and one of my all-time favorites and cookies and cream ice cream is not too far behind. I've been known to polish off way more than I should way faster than I should of this Oreo-y goodness! :)

Dark Chocolate Peppermint M&M Cookies #fbcookieswap

So I am participating for the second year in a row in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap - it's the fourth annual year and I love it. It's one of my most favorite things to do! Not only do I get to make cookies and send them off to three people secretly, but I also get to receive three secret packages of cookies.

My cookies were sent to Shelby of The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch, Sue of It's Okay to Eat the Cupcake, and Liz of Floating Kitchen. Because I had received one of my batches in an adorable Christmas tin before sending mine out, I decided to find some cute tins of my own to send off to my matches. I honestly wish I would've picked up two of each because I fell in love with them. So cute :) I used the recipe cards Lindsay and Julie provided and some very cute holiday Ziploc baggies to keep my cookies fresh.

So the cookies I chose to make were a very festive kind: Dark Chocolate Peppermint M&M Cookies. I've had them pinned for forever (surprise, surprise...) and really wanted to make them. I had trouble finding the peppermint M&Ms until I made the trip out to get some cute tins. I doubled the batch (although I'm sharing a single batch) and ended up with a ton of cookies. I sent a dozen to each of my matches, 20 to our dear friends in New York, and I packed a dozen to take to my mom-in-law's. I still had quite a few leftover. Which is totally fine by me!

These cookies were so decadent and the M&Ms...I am so glad that I have a second bag hidden away because they are going to take so much willpower to save to utilize for a super fantastical recipe in the near future. They are just calling to me to come eat them.

As always, I had a ton of fun making, packaging, and shipping out my cookies. It was even more fun this year with the help of Instagram. I got tagged in a few receiving cookies from me and I tried to tag those who sent me cookies - plus the cookie making process had to be documented :)

Andes Mint Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes as part of our one month down in the deployment cake a few months ago. Mint and chocolate is one of my favorite flavor combinations. And much like my 6 year old, I will choose chocolate cake over any other type of cake when given the choice.

What is great about these cupcakes is that not only is it a rich devil's food moist cupcake, but it also is filled with a mint chocolate ganache and topped with a mint buttercream frosting. Could you think of anything more delicious?!

Drinks Week: Peppermint Mocha Milkshake for One

New York is not my favorite place to live. In fact, it's my least favorite. The winters are long and miserable and the summers...well...they are just as bad. It's been cloudy and raining for most of the summer so far. There are days where it is in the 50s. This week looks like it's finally in the 80s. I think one thing that keeps me going is that we're getting close to counting down our LAST YEAR in this state...and then we get to go home to Tennessee.

So when I'm bummed and the weather is crappy, I turn to chocolate anything. Ice cream is always close to the top of the list of chocolate..and let's face it...coffee is always welcome. I've been wanting to try this recipe from How Sweet It Is for so long, but I don't like sharing and I didn't feel like making two once my husband stole a drink of mine. Deployment is when I take advantage of my stinginess :) I doubled the coffee powder and drank it right up. So delicious!

Girl Scout Week: Thin Mint Gooey Cake Bars

 

I am normally pretty good at keeping an eye on my foods and making sure they don't burn or get too dark, but every once in a while, even at the minimum cooking time, stuff can get a little overdone. This is one of those times. I probably should have checked it prior to it hitting the 30 minute mark, but I didn't. However, these were still gooey and delicious. I mean, it's pretty hard to mess up something with Thin Mints in it! I hope you all enjoyed Girl Scout Cookie week!

Girl Scout Week: Ultimate Thin Mint Brownies

 

So perhaps I should have done this in March, but I didn't plan very well. I actually was unsure that I was going to get any Girl Scout cookies at all this year and almost gave up. I, by chance, ran into a Girl Scout leaving a store when the power had gone out and bought a ridiculous amount of cookies. I probably looked nuts. I ended up getting too many boxes of Samoas (my husband's favorite) and not enough of the Thin Mints (my second favorite). However, I did make two yummy recipes with the Thin Mints I got and put the rest in the freezer for random snacks.

I love how easy these were to make and I definitely want to try them out with a homemade brownie batter and try and alter the icing marble up a bit. But they were still really good brownies!

Tasty Thursday #102: Herbed Burgers

Welcome back to Tasty Thursday!!

I'm gonna be totally honest here...there were two reasons I saved this recipe to try: 1) The picture from the original poster. DROOL! 2) The name of the blogger (scroll down for that one!). I went to the link and was a little weary of the mint, but I have to say, it was a really good burger. I was impressed at how well the mint went with other herbs and worked to make the flavors better.

Chocolate Week: Chocolate Pudding Andes Mint Cookies

Welcome to Chocolate Week - a week's worth of chocolatey goodness in honor of Valentine's Day!

What happens when you put two sweet tooth maniacs in a house together? Well, one of them is older and stockpiles sweets to make recipes. The other is 5 and sneaks upstairs in the middle of the night to raid the stockpile.

You guessed it. I'm talking about my little man and me :) I had every intention of making Oreo Pudding Cookies again - especially since little man ate most the last batch in the middle of the night. However, he ate my Hershey's cookies & cream bars. I raided my cabinet for something that I could use in place of the cookies and cream bars. Lucky enough, I always have a stash of Andes Mints.

I also have problems finding things at the store sometimes here in upstate NY. Either something isn't stocked or they just don't have it at all. I used chocolate pudding in place of Oreo pudding because the Oreo pudding hasn't been stocked in forever.

The results were amazing. Minty, chocolatey, soft, and chewy!