Um, hello. Remember last week when I posted this Peppermint Bark recipe and went on and on about how I can’t bake in the slightest? STILL TRUE but makes the creation of these cookies that much more miraculous. I mean, I 100% cheated by using cake mix, but I’m okay with that. Cheating is highly necessary for me when it comes to baking.

On top of the chocolate cake mix that we use as the base for these yummy cookies, we also throw in some peppermint extract and three hot chocolate packets. I’m talkin’ the kind of hot chocolate packets that you would rip open as a kid, add about six more than instructed to your cup of hot water, and stir just enough that you have a cup of hot chocolate, but not enough that it’s all mixed in – that way you get little molten chocolate bites while drinking. Anybody other than me do that as a kid? I probs could have just eaten those packets plain, if we’re being totally honest here.

Between the cake mix, the peppermint extract, and the hot chocolate packets, these babies end up tasting like a chewy, gooey, chocolatey, pepperminty mug of hot cocoa in cookie form. I’m a LARGE fan. Large enough to eat an embarrassing amount in one sitting because they are ~~slightly~~ extremely addicting.

Now let’s talk about using cake mix for cookies. You adjust the ingredients a little bit from what the back of the box says so that you have a thicker batter that resembles cookie dough, and then you just mix, scoop, and bake like you would with normal cookies. It’s the best cookie hack ever because it creates delicious cookies but takes out essentially all of the getting-out-a-million-ingredients-and-measuring-cups process, which is not my favorite part of baking…at all.

But with cake mix cookies, you dump the mix in, measure out some oil, crack a few eggs, and you’re done! In this case, we add a few extra easy steps with the peppermint extract and hot chocolate, but still so ridiculously easy. There is no separating of wet and dry ingredients, no remembering to soften butter (which I NEVER remember to do. Hello microwave, old friend), no dirtying up a bunch of measuring spoons, no flour and sugar dusting your counter tops – NOPE – just easy peasy lemon squeezy – dump and go.

And the cookies themselves – they come out of the oven super puffy, and you’re like DANG those are some large and fluffy cookies…but then as the minutes pass and they are cooling on your counter top, they flatten out and become tender, chewy, and dense. These do not make hard, crispy cookies (which I don’t like). Even after sitting out for a few days, they’ll still bend a little bit if you hold the cookie by one end. So they are nice and tender and not hard and crisp – my kinda cookie 😍.

Do you guys want to be sufficiently weirded out on your Monday morning and hear about THE most bizarre dream in the existence of dreams that I had last night? So here’s what happened…I got a job at a diner, but halfway through the dream, it turned into a buffet style place, so who knows what it actually was. It was a new job, and this was my first day.

The first thing they had me do was take a coloring book full of bear pictures (like…grizzly bear, black bear…actual bears) and cut out the bears’ eyes, because we tape those on the to-go orders…because why not? That makes sense.

“Here sir, enjoy your Philly Cheesesteak under the watchful eyes of Mr. Bear here. He wants to ensure you have a pleasant dining experience.”

Anyway…moving on. So about half way through my shift, I see Barack and Michelle Obama about to walk in the door. So I leave my bear-eye-cutting duties and decide to go over and toss the salads in the buffet line to make sure they were still fresh. I wanted him to see me acting busy and productive instead of sitting and cutting out the eyeballs from children’s coloring books, which could potentially seem strange to some people…

So he walks past me, we exchange a smile, and then Michelle starts talking to the owner of the diner. Apparently they’re friends. Barack is patiently waiting behind the buffet line for his wife to finish her conversation, and when she does, he starts loading up his plate. He adds a bacon wrapped meatball that is literally the size of my son’s head to his plate, somewhere between the size of a grapefruit and a soccer ball, and then puts a bunch of other stuff on there too (including more bacon) – like, an absurd amount of food – but he doesn’t use the buffet tongs. He grabs everything with his hands. I remember thinkin’ dang, Barack – you hungry. How you stay so nice and slim?!

And that’s where my dream ends.

Like…what happened. How did any of that random crap end up in my dream? The bear eyes? The bacon wrapped meatball? The Obamas? Maybe I’ve legit gone crazy.

Or maybe I was in a sugar induced haze from consuming eleven too many of these delicious cookies…who knows, but it was a weird night.

Peppermint Hot Chocolate Cake Mix Cookies

Author: Annie Chesson
Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 10 mins
Total Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 28 cookies 1x

Ingredients

Scale

1 box chocolate cake mix (I used a basic Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix)
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 envelopes hot chocolate mix (I used Swiss Miss – each envelope is 1 ounce)
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
Crushed peppermint pieces (optional topping)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Mix all ingredients (except crushed peppermint pieces) together in a large bowl. I used my stand mixer, which made this super easy
Scoop out dough balls using a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet. If desired, sprinkle a few pinches of peppermint pieces over each dough ball before baking
Bake for 8-10 minutes (cook time may vary based on oven)

Notes

If you don’t have a cookie scoop, just use a 1 tablespoon measuring spoon to scoop out the dough.

The cookies will feel and look very soft when coming out of the oven, but they harden as they sit. I like mine to have a bit of an “undercooked” texture in the middle – if you don’t like that, I would leave them in for a bit longer.