Chocolate Mint Grinch Cookies

My family always makes the classic Toll House chocolate chip cookies around the holidays.  I love them!  They’re the seemingly universally accepted chocolate chip cookie.

However, I was looking to turn up the creativity a few notches.  One of my favorite flavor combinations for sweets is chocolate and mint, so I figured I’d work that into these cookies for the holidays.

I didn’t want to call them Mint Chocolate Toll House Chocolate Chip & Andes Mints Cookies so I posted a challenge to Facebook to come up with a creative name that hopefully wasn’t too many syllables.  The winner went to Mr. Rob Walker who suggested simply calling them “Grinches”.  It’s fitting, one syllable, and adds to the holiday theme.  Slam dunk!

Ingredients:

I have the ingredients for the batter split into the chocolate side and mint side, but additionally split into dry ingredients (top) and wet ingredients (bottom).

Chocolate batter:

  • 1 cup flour
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • Dash of salt
  • ½ cup cocoa powder (I always recommend Hershey’s)
  • ½ cup salted butter
  • ½ cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Mint batter:

  • 1 ⅛ cup flour
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • Dash of salt
  • ½ cup salted butter
  • ¼ cup white sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp mint extract
  • 10-15 drops green food dye
  • 1 cup Andes Creme de Menthe mints (roughly chopped)
Chopped Andres Mints

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 375.

These next few steps are for EACH batter type:  

  • Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and set aside. 
  • Cream together softened butter, sugars, and extracts.
  • Beat in eggs.
Butter, Sugar, and Extracts

Add dry mixture slowly and mix well.  For the mint batter, add the food dye at this point.  Depending on the dye and how nuclear you want it to look, how much you need will vary.  For the cookies in the photographs, it took about 15 green drops.  

Almost Finished Mint Batter

Add chocolate chips or Andes chips.  

Note:  Careful with the Andes chips.  Mix them as lightly as you can to get them fully incorporated.  They pulverize pretty easily.  

Finished Chocolate and Mint Batters

Combine 50/50 from bowl A/B then B/A.  Feel free to be a little creative here. You want each cookie to be unique!

Drop by scoop or rounded teaspoon on parchment paper on thin cookie sheet.  

Bake for 8-12 minutes.  Bottom edges should just be getting some color. Keep a close eye on them after the 8 minute mark!

Finished Grinches

Enjoy!  These always get people talking when you bring them over and they’re great with some milk!