Thursday, February 21, 2008

Chocolate peanut-butter cookies.

Unlike Hillary Clinton,who proclaimed once as First Lady that she was not going to just "sit at home and bake cookies",I LOVE to bake-especially cookies.There are literally thousands of cookie recipes to be had and its really a creative and thoughtful thing to do occasionally to give away to friends.My daughter loves to "help" by cracking eggs and mixing dough and it is great fun bonding over something so simple and fundamental as baking cookies.Sure,you can buy ready to bake cookies or cookie dough but only in so many varieties.From scratch you can create almost any kind of cookie.Soo....
Tonight after dinner my daughter and I made a batch of chewy chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips.Its a great recipe and the finished cookie is almost brownie-like in its texture.I prefer the peanut butter chips but you can variate with chopped nuts,M&M candies,or other chips like chocolate,mint,or butterscotch.It is a quite simple recipe and I will include it here:

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup baking cocoa(Nestles is best)
2.5 sticks butter
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 10 oz bag peanut butter baking chips(Reeses is best)


Preheat oven to 350
In large bowl whip softened butter,vanilla and sugar-mix in eggs-blend well.
In a second bowl combine flour,salt,baking soda and cocoa-stir in to wet mixture gradually and beat for 4 minutes or until thoroughly blended.Stir in baking chips and drop by teaspoon fulls about 2 inches apart on a nonstick (*)baking sheet.Do not overcook-bake at 7 min or until tops of cookies start to "crack"they will look underdone-set aside to cool until firm.

* The very best baking sheets are the insulated Airbake products.However if you have regular baking sheets Reynolds makes a great baking parchment paper that eliminates those "burnt-bottom" cookies.
Try the recipe and I know you will like the results!!!!I have to hide them from myself!LOL

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