Double Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies

Double chocolate candy cane cookies are recipe #18 of our “24 Days of Christmas” Holiday series where I share 24 recipes over 24 days as a virtual advent countdown to Christmas. Christmas is my favourite holiday, especially when it comes to baking, and I think there are endless creations that we can come up with to reflect the holidays. All 24 holiday recipes will be shared across instagram, tiktok and here on the blog where you can print off the full recipe for your baking pleasure!

The Recipe

These double chocolate stuffed candy cane cookies have been one of my family’s favourite festive cookies for many years now. These cookies are a rich, chocolatey brownie cookie stuffed with a thin mint chocolate and dusted with crushed candy cane on top.

Nothing fancy goes in to these cookies, just your classic baking ingredients! We use melted butter for this recipe to get that chewy, soft brownie centre. Besides the butter, this recipe uses white sugar, eggs, vanilla, cocoa powder, flour, salt and baking soda. There is one more less conventional ingredient in this recipe, applesauce! I know it sounds crazy but you have to trust me that applesauce works wonders in creating a perfectly soft, fudgey cookie.

Why I Love This Recipe

If you have been following me for a long time, you likely recall the era of plant forward recipes the consumed 2020. While I still love and lean in to plant based abundance, I have incorporate a lot of animal products and protein back in to my diet, which is a topic for another time. However, these chocolate cookies were born in my vegan era, hence the use of applesauce instead of eggs. These cookies are sooo damn good though, I didn’t dare mess with a good thing and replace the applesauce with eggs just because I eat them again. The applesauce does wonders as a binder for the other ingredients while also adding a subtle sweetness to the cookies and therefor the need for only a cup of added sugar.

If my Dad likes these vegan-esque cookies, then you absolutely will! And if you are steadfast against using applesauce, I can confirm that 2 eggs will do the trick, however I really do think you should step out of your comfort zone because look at the centre of these beauties!!

The Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter melted
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup applesauce unsweetened
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2/3 cups cocoa powder
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup crushed candy canes
• 1/4 cup icing sugar for rolling

How To Make

• Start by grabbing all of your needed ingrdients and preheating your oven to 350 degrees F. Grab a parchment lined baking tray.
• In an electric mixer on medium speed combine your melted butter and white sugar. Once this is mixed well and creamed together, add in your cocoa powder using a sifter to prevent any clumps.
• Once combined, add in applesauce, eggs and vanilla.
• In a separate bowl combine flour, baking soda and salt and then gradually add this to the wet mixture and mix until combined, but don’t over mix!
• Scoop out 2 tbsp ish sized balls of cookie dough. Roll this in to a ball in your palm and then flatten it and stick your thin mint chocolate in the centre, pulling up the sides around it and re-rolling in to a ball. Do this to all the dough until you have 12-14 cookies.
• Add your icing sugar to a small shallow plate and roll each stuffed ball of cookie dough in the icing sugar.
• Stick these on your parchment lined baking sheet and dust with the crushed candy cane. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
• Let these cool before digging in. Makes about a dozen cookies.

Storing These Cookies

These cookies are magic when it comes to freezing them. As with most of my recipes, you have two options when it comes to making these ahead of time. You can pre-make the dough and roll out the cookie dough and freeze the cookies before baking them. Alternatively, you can absolutely bake these up, let them cool completely, and then freeze them in a freezer bag for up to 6 months.

You can find a recipe video for these cookies here!