Mint chocolate or grasshopper cookie sandwiches have been on my to-do list for quite some time, and not surprisingly, as the chocolate mint flavor-combo just might be my all-time fave and, umh, who doesn’t love creme-filled sandwich cookies? My introduction to mint-chocolate cookie sandwiches was when I had my first Candy Cane Joe-Joe’s, Trader Joe’s seasonal chocolate cookie sandwiches with peppermint filling. One of my beloved old baked pals introduced me to them, and we would gorge on them at Christmas time, rejecting all manner of homemade treat we were baking, in favor of Trader Joe’s deliciously-minty one.
Cut to several years later (like 10) and I am happy to report that I have conveniently spawned a younger child who shares my deep love of peppermint and chocolate and is quasi-addicted to Newman-O’s Crème Filled Mint Chocolate Cookies. A quick aside: I have some mixed feelings (like a lot of them) about allowing my kids to eat packaged sweets, as 90% of the time there is something sweet and homemade lying around – however, am trying to be a little less rigid (ahem) in my parenting (not to mention the fact that I used to be a peppermint Joe-Joe’s addict), and so, purchased cookies can be found in my cupboards. 
And then there’s the broken leg. Baking on one leg is not the easiest of tasks and I have found, over these last three weeks, that baking cookies is something that I can actually do—not effortlessly—but with only a minimal (okay, moderate) amount of cursing. And then—finally—there’s St. Patrick’s day on Thursday, a holiday perfectly suited to eating green-tinted sweets. So, in short, it was the combo of the mint-chocolate loving son, the broken leg, and St. Patrick’s day that left me no choice but to tackle Grasshopper Cookie Sandwiches. Lucky you.
I looked here, here, here, and here, for inspiration on these grasshopper cookie sandwiches. I wanted my cookies to be dark in color, crispy, deeply chocolate-y, just slightly sweet, and a tad salty (to combat the sweetness of the minty filling). A bit of black cocoa took care of the color and chocolate flavor, I achieved crispiness (like I did when making wafer cookies for icebox cakes) with a bit of corn syrup, some milk, and no eggs. Finally, a little less sugar and a little more salt took care of the sweet/salty thing I was after. As for the filling, I wanted it to taste like the classic Oreo filling, albeit mint-flavored, and achieved that via vegetable shortening, powdered sugar, water, salt, and extract. I decided to make these grasshopper cookie sandwiches extra creme-filled when I was scooping out the filling and used a slightly too-large scoop – but once I’d done that, there was no going back. Enjoy, peeps, these babies will knock your (preferably green) sox off.
[yumprint-recipe id=’88’]
