Sometimes in life, you don’t know better and plant your mint in the ground. Sometimes, if you’re like me, you did it on purpose…
If you find yourself with a mountain of mint, never fear, just put it in a food processor with a heap of sugar, make cookies about it and solarize your mint patch back into submission with black plastic or cardboard and a dream.
If you are so brave, harvest as much mint as you can muster, and when you trim it back, only cut 2/3s of the plant, leaving the remaining woody stem and some green stem to regrow and reign again. If you would like to end your mint’s conquests, cut your mint plants down to the ground, and cover them with cardboard or black plastic.
In your kitchen, strip the mint sprigs of all their leaves; save the leaves and wash them well, like you would lettuce, and spin them in a salad or herb spinner until they’re mostly dry. If without a spinner, dry them as well as you can with towels (paper or otherwise) so they are not sopping wet.
By volume, measure 1 loose cup of mint leaves to 1 cup of white sugar and process in a food processor until the mint leaves are completely blended into the sugar, which should be slightly green. There might be tiny, tiny, tiny pieces of leaves, but as long as the sugar behaves like brown sugar, like when it is slightly sticky with its molasses, you’re in the clear. This can be used to replace brown sugar in lots of recipes, like brownies, or even frozen for a midwinter simple syrup to make mo
Next! Get out your kitchen scale!
| Ingredient | Amount |
- Scale your butter and dark chocolate into a microwaveable bowl, or into a metal bowl if you want to use the double-boiler method, to melt your chocolate and butter together. Microwave for 1 minute, then 30 seconds until the chocolate is mostly melted. Stir to combine.
- Scale your eggs separately from your sugars so the sugars don’t “cook” the eggs (sugar loves to steal moisture from other things), and use a stand mixer, a handheld mixer or get your whisking arm ready and whisk the sugars and eggs together until light and airy.
- While this mixes, scale and sift your dry ingredients all together.
- Fold your chocolate mixture into the sugar mixture in two parts so as to not deflate the fluffiness by adding in density all at once
- Then, fold in your sifted dry ingredients until combined.
- Last, fold in your chocolate chips and cover the bowl in plastic or with a lid.
- Place your cookie batter in the fridge until it’s completely solidified, then scoop with a cookie scoop or spoon out cookie-sized balls. Mine is a .75 oz scoop, for mini-sized cookies. Keep these in the fridge or freezer until ready to bake!
- Preheat your oven when you’re ready, and bake on a parchment-lined cookie sheet at 350ºF for 7 minutes, then rotate your cookie sheet and bake for 7 more minutes.
- When done, the edges of the cookies should lift slightly if you touch them with a brave finger or a spatula. The middle should be set, and not look fudgey. If you scooped bigger cookies–this is your visual queue!
- Let cookies cool, and use a spatula to lift them, as the cookies are brownie-like and might stick. Enjoy!!
Best of luck on tackling your mint patch this summer, and even if you can’t work through all your mint via cookie dough, chopping it and using it as a light midsummer mulch is a great way to deter pests.
Never fear! Usually, what comes from the earth can always go back to it 🙂
-Chris
