Nothing Beats Homemade - Mint Milanos

Homemade Mint Milanos

I love Pepperidge Farms Mint Milanos. I used to buy them whenever I saw them on sale at the grocery store, but haven't bought them for awhile now. I saw this recipe and I knew that I wanted to make them. The original recipe is for orange-chocolate filled Milanos so I substituted peppermint extract in the filling. 

It was difficult to get the correct size of the cookies. The recipe said to make them 1 inch long and that resulted in very small, bite-size cookies....not exactly what I was looking for.  When Ryan and I were making them we experimented with different lengths and widths. If you are going to make these I would make them about 2 inches long. They spread out, but I would try to get the cookies to be about 1/2 - 3/4 inch wide before baking. Next time I will try using a bigger piping tip. Lastly, because we made them larger than the original recipe 10 minutes was not long enough and the cookies came out too soft and pliable. Next time I will make sure they get a darker golden brown.

Here is the recipe with my changes:

Homemade Mint Milanos

adapted from Gale Gand's Milan Cookies

Ingredients:

12 tbs (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)

2 tbs vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups flour

Cookie filling, recipe follows

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place silpats on baking sheets and set aside (I tried one baking sheet with parchment paper and my cookies came out very mishapen).
2. Using a stand mixer with paddle attachment or hand mixer fitted to cream the butter. Add powdered sugar and mix until combined and fluffy.
3. Gradually add the egg whites and mix in the vanilla extract.
4. Slowly add the flour and mix until just incorporated. 
5. Fill a piping bag with a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 2 inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread. Bake for 10-14 minutes or until golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.
6. When cookies are cool, match cookies up by size. Spread filling on one cookie and sandwich together with the other. Repeat with the rest of the cookies.

Cookie Filling:

1/2 cup heavy cream

8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

1 tsp peppermint extract

Directions: 

1. Pour heavy cream into a small saucepan and heat, but do not boil.
2. Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl. Let sit for a couple minutes.
3. Whisk to melt chocolate, add peppermint extract and blend well. Set aside to cool (put in the fridge to speed this up).