Tag-Archive for ◊ peanut butter ◊

24 Mar 2017 Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

 

chocolate-peanut-butter-chip-cookies

This recipe is from the back of the bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips (see picture below).  The cookie is fabulous.  It’s like a peanut butter cup in cookie form.

My daughter made these cookies for a “Back of the Box” themed Cookbook Club meeting.  She loves peanut butter.  She saw the chips.  She read the recipe on the back of the bag.  She made the cookies. Everyone swooned. End of story.

Well, not quite the end of the story because now I’m posting the recipe, as is, lifted right off the back of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Chip bag. You’ve just read the recipe and my swooning review. You are going to go out to get a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips. You are going to make the cookie. You and yours will swoon. You’ll go down as one of the best cookie bakers EVER!

End of story.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

  • 3/4 cup cocoa powder (natural baking powder-like Hershey’s, NOT Dutch processed cocoa powder)
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 10 oz. pkg REESE’S Peanut Butter Chips – divided use
  • 1 1/4 cups butter (2-1/2 sticks), at room temperature
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

 

  1.  Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Stir together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; set aside.
  3. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with mixer until fluffy, 3-5 minutes.
  4. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.
  5. Gradually add flour mixture, beating well.
  6.  Stir in most of the  peanut butter chips. Hold out some peanut butter chips to decorate the tops of the cookies before baking.
  7. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased, preferably parchment lined, unrimmed cookie sheet. If desired, press 2, 3, or 4 peanut butter chips onto the top of each cookie.
  8. Bake 8 to 9 minutes. (Do not over bake; cookies will be soft. They will puff while baking and flatten while cooling.)
  9. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.
  10. Makes about 4 dozen cookies, but depends on the size of your cookie.

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today!

reese-s-peanut-butter-chips

14 Sep 2012 Chocolate Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

ChocPB cookies good Stack

I have been meaning to post this recipe forever, I just never had a good picture of the cookie.  The recipe only makes 32 cookies, and around here 32 cookies lasts approx 32 seconds.  My friend Josee made these for a Christmas Cookie Exchange two years ago (that’s how long I have wanted to post this recipe). I gave a dozen of these to a friend, Becky,  for a “Craft it Forward” exchange and I promised the recipe to her ONE year ago. (Bad Polly, bad, bad, bad, bad.)  But finally, I  made a batch that didn’t get scarfed immediately.  I made them for my Yoga Group, and they are too polite to eat a half dozen each at one sitting (but it could have been that I had them so busy bagging stuff for an upcoming fundraiser and they didn’t have any hands free to eat cookies!)  They did sing praises for the cookies they did eat though and encouraged me to post the recipe ASAP.

Now getting back to the first time I encountered this cookie.  It was my favorite cookie that year, maybe my favorite cookie in all the years of our exchange (of which there have only been three).  Oddly enough, I made my cookie that year from same cookie magazine Josee used, and I never even considered making these!  Even now, if I just looked at the recipe, I would not be inclined to make it. This is one cookie that tastes much, much better than it’s list of ingredients.  It tastes much, much better than it looks, too and, no matter how good the picture looks above  (do you like it?  I got a new camera!), it still doesn’t do the cookie justice.  Take a bite!  There’s a layer of peanut butter inside!  As one of my friends said, who shall remain nameless, “So how did you get the peanut butter IN there?”

So here it is, at long last, the recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies (originally published as “Peanut Butter Munchies” in the Better Homes and Gardens “100 Best Cookies”, 2009).

One more note,  I often loose track of how many balls I have, so now I line up a chocolate ball with a peanut butter ball before I start rolling.  One time I ran out of peanut butter balls! I have no idea how that happened.  So I just cracked open another bottle of wine and made another half batch of the peanut butter batter, and all was fine. Hic.  (Just kidding.  I don’t drink.  Ever.  Really!! No, REALLY, I don’t!!!)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

For Chocolate Cookie

  • 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
  • ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ cup butter (one stick, 4 oz), softened
  • ¼ cup peanut butter (I always use creamy)
  • ½ cup granulated sugar
  • ½ cup packed brown sugar (I use light brown sugar)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon of milk or cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

For Peanut Butter Filling

  • ½ cup peanut butter
  • 3/4 cup powdered sugar

For Sparkle

  • 2 tablespoon granulated sugar
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. In a bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda and set aside.
  3. In a large bowl of an electric mixer combine butter and peanut butter.  Beat for a minute or so. Add in both sugars and beat for another minute or so.  Beat in egg and milk.
  4. Slowly add the flour-cocoa powder mixture to the butter-peanut butter mixture and beat just until combined.  Roll ball into a snake shape and refrigerate for a short while (to make it easier to handle) while you mix up the peanut butter filling.
  5. Beat peanut butter and powdered sugar together until well combined.  Roll dough into 32 equal balls.
  6. Divide cookie dough into 32 equal portions.
  7. For each cookie, flatten a piece of chocolate dough and top with a peanut butter filling ball.  Wrap Chocolate cookie dough around the peanut butter filling, making a ball in the process.  Place balls on a cookie sheet, about 1 inch apart.
  8. Rub a bit of leftover dough or a very slight bit of butter onto the bottom of a glass.  Dip glass in sugar.  Press cookies flat with sugar coated glass. (redip glass in sugar before pressing down on each ball).
  9. Bake cookies in preheated 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes, until the sides are just slightly cracked.  Cool on cookie sheet for a minute or so and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Becky, I hope you are reading this…, I’m sorry that I took so long.  Josee, thanks for introducing me to this excellent cookie! Everyone else, ENJOY!  This is one great cookie!

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today, come back again soon!  Now that I am learning how to master an SLR camera, I will probably be posting more frequently 🙂  I have a terrific parchment wrapped salmon recipe and a long time favorite gazpacho recipe just waiting in the wings!

14 Jun 2011 Chocolate-Peanut Butter Popcorn

My friends tell me I have more than my share of cooking gadgets.  I don’t disagree with them.  But I don’t have everything.  For example, I don’t have one of those quick freeze Popsicle makers, and until today I didn’t have a popcorn machine. The Popsicle maker is on my “Wish List”, but the popcorn machine has been on my kitchen counter churning out popcorn for the last few hours.

I needed a popcorn machine today.  My daughter Abby is manager of our neighborhood pool this Summer and tonight is the first Kid Movie Night.  The pool’s popcorn machine is broken, and she can’t have her first movie night without popcorn, now can she?  So we went out and got a popcorn machine.  It wasn’t expensive.  It was on super-duper clearance at Target.  I KNEW that lucky penny I found on the driveway this morning was going to mean something!

My daughter, being sensible and well organized (like her mother), thought she should practice with the popcorn machine before taking it down to the pool and expecting it to perform perfectly.  So she practiced, and managed to churn out a lot of popcorn.  The machine worked like a charm!  But there was about twenty-four cups of practice popcorn on our counter.  I ate a cup.  My grandson ate about four pieces, and then spilled a cup.  My son refused a cup. Only twenty-two cups to go!

I thought about making Caramel Corn with the popcorn.  I have a terrific Caramel Corn recipe posted, and while my Caramel Corn is one of my favorite foods on the planet, it is a bit of a bother to make.  Time was running out, so I turned to foodgawker, searched on Popcorn, and found this recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn.  On closer inspection I found the recipe had been posted by one of my favorite bloggers, Brown Eyed Baker.  The recipe had to be good!  I just knew it!  It was my lucky day.  That was one powerful penny.

This recipe is the same recipe as for Muddy Buddies, but using popcorn instead of Rice Chex.  It’s a cinch to pull together, and it’s good for you:  popcorn, whole grain; peanut butter, plant based protein; chocolate, dairy!  And it’s melt-in-your mouth delicious.  Seriously addictive. I am pretty sure you have all the ingredients in your cabinet, too.

And it’s Summer.  Don’t we all need a movie night?  How about movie night with one of the best popcorn snacks EVAH?!

Umm….there’s just one more thing.  This popcorn doesn’t keep well; it starts to get soft after a few hours.  So eat fast!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn

9 cups plain popped popcorn (top of stove, air popped, popcorn machine, microwaved…)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (or milk chocolate, or half bittersweet and half milk, or whatever chopped chocolate you have on hand)
½ cup creamy peanut butter
¼ cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups powdered sugar

  1. Place the popped popcorn in a very large bowl.
  2. In a microwave  melt the chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter for about 1 minute.  Stir well. Chocolate and peanut butter should be melted and very smooth. Stir in the vanilla.
  3. Pour the chocolate mixture over the popcorn. Using a large spoon or spatula, stir until all of the popcorn is evenly coated with the chocolate/peanut butter mixture.
  4. Sprinkle the powdered sugar over the chocolate-covered popcorn and stir until evenly coated.
  5. Spread the mixture onto a baking sheet and place in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes or until the chocolate is set.
  6. Serve! Leftovers don’t keep well.  Eat everything as soon as it’s made!

Thank you for stopping by my kitchen today.  If you like what you see, please consider subscribing to my blog.  If you subscribe you will get a quick e-mail to alert you each time I post a new recipe (which I try to do a few times a week).  Great seeing you!

Polly

04 Jun 2011 Frozen Bananas

Such an easy recipe, and one you’ll probably use all summer long, assuming the weather gets better.  June 4th here in San Jose, and it rained all day!  Unbelievable, but we ate frozen bananas for dessert anyway!  They were a hit.  I only wish we had waited 5 minutes for the bananas to soften a bit before we tore into them.  You can see the frost on the bananas in these pictures!  On hot days you won’t have to wait so long…

I’ve been making frozen bananas for a decade or so, and have decided that Hershey’s Special Dark is the best chocolate to compliment the taste of the banana (odd, since I am usually a milk chocolate devotee). There are a variety of toppings the chocolate covered banana can be rolled in.  The most popular, in my experience, are toasted coconut, chopped peanuts, and rainbow jimmies.  Other options include leaving them plain (for the boring people in your crowd!) chopped peanut butter chips, mini M&M’s, cookie crumbs, granola, and any kids cereal.  IMHO, bananas+cereal+bit of chocolate= a special summer breakfast.  I think your kids might nominate you for mom/pop-of-the-year, if you agreed with me!  Just think; frozen bananas as a special treat for a summer birthday (or for a summer half birthday for winter birthday kids–as all my kids were), or for the first day of summer vacation, or to celebrate the summer solstice…

Frozen Bananas

Quantities are approximate, as size of bananas varies widely.  If you end up with extra bananas, and not enough chocolate, just keep the extra bananas in the freezer until you are ready to make smoothies or banana bread.

  • 3-4 perfect bananas (not over-ripe and not green, no bruises or black spots)
  • 6 or 8 Popsicle sticks (if you don’t have Popsicle sticks craft sticks, lollipop sticks, chopsticks, or even the tops of plastic Popsicle molds can be used)
  • 2  4.25 oz. bars Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate (don’t substitute chocolate chips…if you do, you’ll have to add a few tablespoons of Crisco to help them melt…, and I think that’s yucky)
  • assorted toppings (rainbow jimmies, chopped peanuts or other nuts, mini M&M’s, chopped peanut butter chips, toasted coconut, granola, cereal…)
  1. Peel the bananas and remove any banana strings.  Inspect the bananas carefully and cut off any bruises or soft parts.  Cut the good bananas in half, and insert a stick into the flat, cut end, of each banana.  Place skewered bananas on a pan/plate/tray that will fit into your freezer and open freeze for an hour or so (or even overnight).
  2. Set out chosen toppings in shallow bowls or on pieces of wax paper or foil.
  3. Break chocolate into squares, place into good quality microwave safe bowl, and melt chocolate in microwave on 50% power for about 2 or 3 minutes.
  4. While chocolate is melting remove frozen bananas from freezer.
  5. Dip frozen banana into warm melted chocolate and, with a knife,  QUICKLY spread chocolate all over the banana.  Before chocolate hardens–work quickly–dip and roll banana in chosen topping.  Repeat with remaining bananas.
  6. Refreeze chocolate covered bananas for about 30 minutes or so.
  7. Remove bananas from freezer, place in a covered container or Ziploc bag, and return to freezer until ready to eat.  Frozen bananas keep well, or at least for a few weeks (I haven’t had any in the freezer for longer than 2 weeks…)

Thank for stopping by my kitchen today.  See you tomorrow!!