Glaze For Chocolate Mint Cookies

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Mint Cookies (from NIGELLA EXPRESS) are chocolate chip cookies with a chocolate mint glaze. The mint glaze contains peppermint essence or you can use peppermint extract. If you can't find this then there are a few possible options. The first is to infuse the water that you will use in the glaze with mint, using fresh mint leaves. We would suggest heating 60ml (4 tablespoons or 1/4 cup) of water with a small handful of mint leaves and leaving this to infuse for 2 hours (if longer then leave in the fridge to infuse). Strain the water, bring it to boiling point and use 2 tablespoons of this infused water in the glaze.

Alternatively you could use a mint flavoured chocolate but it would need to be one that is a smooth, dark chocolate that is mint flavoured (such as Lindt mint intense) and not one that has a mint fondant filling or mint shards in it (such as Mint Crisp), as these will not melt easily. You will probably need to melt around 30g/1 ounce of chocolate and then add the icing (confectioners') sugar. Add a few drops of water after if you need to thin the glaze slightly or add some extra icing sugar if it is too thin. A final option would be to make up the glaze without the peppermint essence then crush up some Mint Crisp and scatter this over the cookies after they have been glazed, so that the crushed candy sticks to the cookies.