This is a Kraft foods recipe (it was printed in their free magazine) and as for most of their recipes, it was written to sell their product, not to make the best-tasting item. However, it can be salvaged, I think. I made these this Christmas and completely ignored the peppermint b/c candy canes and cake-like cookies sounded like a bad combo to me. Tow ways to make it better would be to stir some Andes mint baking chips into the batter before baking (I did this and they were pretty yummy and very minty) or to just bake the cookies as it, then dip the tops into more melted chocolate with peppermint extract stirred in and let the chocolate cool and harden. I also may fool around with this recipe a little. I think making it with a mix of shortenings instead of just butter may make it more smooth.

Maybe I did something wrong, but the cookies where hard to make. They were kind of liquidy and where practically melting before I put them in the oven. Also, they did not have a very strong taste. They where kind of cakey. Taking into another persons reveiw, I used dark chocolate. Considering the strength of the dark chocolate, I would hate to try the ones with semi-sweet. So, I made about three batches. The first where with the crushed candy cane sprinkled on top along with shaved dark chocolate. The second and third bath I put candy cane in the batter and just put shaved dark chocolate on top. This turned out much better. I did have to put some elbow grease into the cleaning the pan afterwards, but they tasted much better. I'm not trying to put this recipe down it just needs a few personal touches to make it perfect. Overall, it was a nice holiday recipe that my family loved.

These cookies were OK, but a bit lackluster and bland tasting, more like a mellow brownie with peppermint. The plusses are that they are very easy and cute looking. The so-so aspects are that they are not all that flavorful. If I were to make them again, I would use dark chocolate as the semi-sweet chocolate is much too bland for my taste. These would be a great cookie to make for a school bakesale with a toddler or elementary school-age child due to their ease of preparation.

My niece and I made these together, she is 6 and just had a blast. We melted the chocolate and butter on the stove instead of the microwave. They turned out wonderful! I ended up making 60 of them so they went out to other people and EVERYONE just loved them...said they were the BEST EVER!!! thank you for the recipe :) I cook/bake to keep my mind off my pain(sickness) so while they were in the figde for 3 hours I made banana bread.