Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Who doesn't love chocolate and peanut butter?! This is a flavor combo favorite that I picked up from my Dad early on in life. When I saw this recipe, I thought duh, must try. They were amazing out of the oven and the next day, but they get dry quickly so you'll have to eat them quickly! Here's the goods:

Recipe:
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (from Flavia's Flavors)

2c flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
3/4 c smooth peanut butter (I used natural)
1/2c sugar
1/2c brown sugar
1 lg egg
1 t vanilla
1c semi-sweet chocolate chips

*This recipe requires chilling the dough for 2 hours+

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, peanut butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Beat until lightened in color and texture, about 2 minutes. In a small bowl, lightly beat the egg and vanilla then add it to the large bowl. Mix well to fully incorporate. Gradually add the flour mixture to the large bowl, scraping down sides as necessary. Do not over mix! Add in the chocolate chips and stir to distribute with a spatula.

Cover dough with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat to 325F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Remove dough from refrigerator and allow dough to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Using a cookie scoop, distribute the dough onto the baking sheet. Cross hatch with a fork. bake for 15 minutes or until the edges are just slightly golden. Cool completely.


Enjoy the peanut butter chocolate goodness!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with the Sprinkles Recipe

I know that many people love Sprinkles cupcakes, but when I'm in Highland village (the Houston location of Sprinkles) I only bother stopping in if they are serving the peanut butter chocolate cupcake because it's amazing. Their other flavors are good, but the one that has always been a standout (no matter how many I try) has always been peanut butter chocolate. This is described on their website as a "chocolate chip-studded peanut butter cake with fudgy milk chocolate cream cheese frosting". Amazeballs. Candace Nelson went on some random talk show called 'Home with Lisa Quinn' in 2009 and divulged her recipe. I tried it once and thought it was a miserable fail. I actually threw out the cupcakes (gasp!). I recently decided to give it another go and see if I could figure out what I did wrong. I have no idea what I did this time, but they were amazing. Just like in the store and I couldn't be happier! Now if I could only get Crave to divulge their white chocolate macadamia cupcake recipe I'd be money! Here are my version of the Sprinkles cupcakes:

Recipe
Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes (from Sprinkles owner Candace Nelson)

1c flour
1t baking powder
1/4t salt
6T butter, softened
3/4c smooth all natural peanut butter
1/2c dark brown sugar
1/2c sugar
2 eggs
1t vanilla
1/2c whole milk
2c semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 (8oz) pkg cream cheese, softened
1/4c butter, softened
1/2c cocoa
 powdered sugar
heavy cream

Preheat to 350F. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add eggs and blend until smooth. In a small bowl, combine mils and vanilla. Alternately add flour and milk mixtures, beginning and ending with flour. Mix until just incorporated. Fold in chocolate chips. Scoop into liners and bake about 22 minutes. Cool completely.

For the frosting, beat together the cream cheese and butter. Scrape down sides. Add cocoa powder. Beat until well mixed. Add powdered sugar and heavy cream until desired consistency is achieved. Frost cooled cupcakes.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies Stuffed with Peanut Butter

These cookies are outta control. I made a batch without the peanut butter and they were crazy good too. Try this recipe today! For those of you who had mothers that were in charge of high school SGAs and baked Otis Spunkmeyer cookies as a fundraiser and you therefore ate cookies all the time in your childhood will find these cookies akin to the double chocolate chip cookies from Otis. Yum! Check em out:

Recipe
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies Stuffed with Peanut Butter (original from Lovin in the Oven)

Stuffing:
1c creamy peanut butter
1/2c sugar
1 egg

Cookies:
2 sticks butter, room temp
1c sugar
3/4c brown sugar
2 eggs
1T vanilla
1 3/4c flour
1t baking soda
1/2t salt
2c semi-sweet chocolate chips
1c cocoa (Hershey's special dark)

Stuffing:
Beat together all ingredients until smooth

Cookies:
Preheat to 350F. Beat butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla, beat until smooth. Mix in the flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder intil just combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Assembly:
I flattened a tablespoon of cookie dough on a baking sheet. Then placed a rounded tablespoon of the peanut butter mixture on top. Finally, placed a large cookie scoop of dough on top and pressed the seam so no peanut butter was showing.

Bake ~15 minutes. If you are not adding the peanut butter stuffing then bake ~10 minutes. Cool completely.

Note* you can always swap out some of the semi-sweet chocolate chips with other chips or nuts/ dried fruit for a different taste!

Enjoy!

Most delicious richness ever: Snickers Tart

I was invited to attend a Halloween carnival with my friend Stephanie this past weekend and there happened to be a dessert contest following for the 'young adults' of her church. Now, I love me some competition and Halloween AND baking so this was going to be money. The contest indicated that the dessert had to be Halloween-ish and I had this recipe from the last Martha Stewart Living that I was waiting for a reason to try. The dessert was called a Peanut, Caramel, and Chocolate Tart but I call it the Snickers-inspired Tart. This is not for the faint of heart, I can barely finish a sliver per sitting. It's uber decadent and somewhat time consuming. Here are some of my pictures of the final product (*note: they do not do it justice, see pictures from Martha's website):
Assembly Line of Ingredients:

The Mangled first slice (there were only plastic knives at the event):

Clean slice:




Snickers-Inspired Tart (from Martha Stewart Living)

Cookie Crust:
1 (9oz) box chocolate wafer cookies, finely ground (for this I bought a package of store brand oreos and scraped the cream off the center and blended the cookies in my blender)
1 T sugar
1/4t salt
1 stick butter, melted (perhaps less because my crust was rock hard)

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine cookie crumbs, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Stir in butter. Press mixture into bottom and up the sides of a 9" springform pan. Bake until dry and firm, about 10 minutes. Cool completely.


Caramel Sauce:
1 1/4c sugar
1/4c water
1c heavy cream
1/3c creme fraiche (I used crema mexicana)
1c roasted salted peanuts

Heat sugar and water in a medium saucepan over med-high heat until a dark amber color (about 12 minutes). Carefully add heavy cream (it will bubble and hiss). Bring mixture to a boil and melt any caramel that seized when cream was added. Transfer to a medium bowl and stir in creme fraiche. Refrigerate until cool. I actually froze mine for about an hour to speed the process up. fold in peanuts.


Peanut Butter Mousse:
1 (8oz) pkg cream cheese, softened
1/2c powdered sugar
1/2t salt
1 1/4c smooth peanut butter (I used reduced fat JIF)
1/2t vanilla
1c heavy cream

Beat cream cheese and powdered sugar until fluffy. Beat in salt. Add peanut butter and vanilla, beat until well combined. In a separate bowl, whisk heavy cream until medium stiffness peaks form. Fold whipped cream into peanut butter mixture in 3 additions, making sure whipped cream is fully incorporated for each addition.


**Here you should assemble the parts of the tart that you have. Pour the caramel into the crust and then carefully spread peanut butter mousse over the caramel, ensuring that the layers don't mix. You can also refrigerate the crust with the caramel sauce for 30 minutes to ensure no mixing of layers. After you add the peanut butter, refrigerate for 30 minutes.


Chocolate Ganache:
8oz semisweet chocolate
1c heavy cream

In small saucepan, bring heavy cream to a simmer over med-high heat. Remove from heat. Add chocolate to the cream and let sit for 1 minute. Whisk until completely combined. Pour ganache over peanut butter mousse layer. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Really involved process, but totally worth it! Enjoy!

P.S. I won a $10 gift card for winning the dessert contest!

Minis!

I decided to test out making mini cupcakes in preparation for the ones I will be making for an upcoming kid's birthday party. I also have been wanting to try making peanut butter icing from the two new varieties of Peanut Butter & Co. peanut butter that I just purchased: White Chocolate Wonderful and Dark Chocolate Dreams. FYI: I picked these two up at Arlan's Market and they were cheaper there than online, check your local grocery first! I also wanted to get a handle on dipping minis in chocolate shell so I went for it with these minis. Here are the two different minis as a finished product:




They are pretty darn delicious. I love me some pb and chocolate and these don't disappoint. They are pretty sweet with the flavored pb icing but since they are mini it's not too overwhelming. The recipe for the cake is Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake and the icing is just peanut butter, splash of vanilla, splash of milk, and powdered sugar until the proper consistency is reached. You can see instructions on how to do the chocolate shell in this previous post:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Mud Hen Bars

So, I've been experimenting with the recipe to-try pile and I came across these mud hen bars, which I had never heard anything about. Apparently it's a blondie bottom with goodies int he middle, and a meringue top. The ones I tried were peanut butter flavored so the blondie bottom was a peanut butter blondie, the center consisted of semisweet chocolate chips and peanut butter chips, and the top was a brown sugar meringue. Here are some pictures of the finish product fresh out of the oven:



I must say, i think the meringue makes these obscenely sweet. If you have a fierce sweet tooth, these are for you! I would have preferred just the blondie bottom with perhaps the goodies mixed into the batter. Here is the recipe if you would like to experiment as well:

Peanut Butter Mud Hens (from Cookie Madness)

1/4c butter, softened
1/4c creamy peanut butter
1/4c sugar
3T + 1/2c brown sugar
1/4t vanilla
1 lg egg, divided
1/2c flour
1/4c chopped peanuts (I skipped these)
1/2c semisweet chocolate chips (I used my new Guittard chips!!!)
1/2c peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 350F.
Beat together butter, peanut butter, sugar, 3T brown sugar, vanilla, and egg yolk. Add flour until just mixed. Stir in peanuts. Spread batter across bottom of grease 8" square pan.
Sprinkle chocolate chips and peanut butter chips evenly over batter.
Beat egg white until stiff peaks form. Bean in 1/2c brown sugar. Spread egg white mixture over chips and batter. Bake 25 minutes or until meringue is brown. Cool on wire rack for a few hours.

Crazy Cupcake Duo

I haven't been doing much baking lately, probably because it's so hot I hate turning on the oven and making it hotter than hot. But, since it was my awesome friend Randi's bday this weekend I decided to pull out all the stops and try two new cupcakes. The first was a Chocolate peanut butter concoction with a Resse's cup at the bottom. I plopped the Reese's cup in the foil liner, poured in the chocolate cupcake batter and baked as usual. It was topped with delicious peanut butter buttercream icing and some cocoa for show (I'm being inspired by Cupcake Wars to get a little fancier with the presentation haha). The second cupcake was a chocolate cake with caramel injected after baking and topped with a cream cheese, chocolate espresso icing and finished with espresso sugar crystals. Here are some pics of the duo:



The overall consensus was that the peanut butter ones were awesome and the other ones were pretty good, but most preferred the peanut butter. I don't really have recipes for either one since I just made them up but the cakes were from Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake recipe. The Peanut Butter Buttercream was made with about 1/2c peanut butter and a stick of butter and 1/4c of shortening. Then powdered sugar to whatever consistency you like. The Espresso icing was 1 brick of cream cheese, 1/2 stick of butter, 1t espresso ground, and 1/3c of cocoa. Once again, add powdered sugar to desired consistency. I used my Pampered Chef Icing gun to inject the caramel (I couldn't find dulche de leche so I just used caramel ice cream topping).

Peanut Butter Smores Bars

So I got another donation for the Great American Bake Off fundraiser that I’m doing. Thanks Crisp Family! The request was, once again, for chocolate. I of course went to my new favorite recipe resource, Baked Perfection, and found a recipe for Peanut Butter Smores Bars. I got the OK from Amy and to the kitchen I went. I think I overdid it on pretty much all the layers of this bar so they are ultra decadent and gooey. I recommend heating these babies up in the microwave (they’re best warm) and eating them with a fork they’re sooo gooey (and therefore delicious). Here are some pics of how mine turned out:



Here is the recipe from Baked Perfection with my exact ingredients:

Peanut Butter Smores Bars

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs ( 7 full graham crackers)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 super-sized (4 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate Ghirardelli Bars
2/3 cup JIF reduced fat creamy peanut butter
1 (7oz) jar marshmallow fluff

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix until just combined. Divide dough in half and press half of the dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan. Spread the peanut butter evenly over the dough. Place chocolate bars over peanut butter . Two 4 oz. bars should fit perfectly side by side, but break the chocolate (if necessary) to get it to fit in a single layer. Spread marshmallow fluff evenly over the chocolate layer.

Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff. This is most easily done by putting the second half of the dough in a gallon size freezer bag. Use your palms to flatten it out, and then use scissors to cut down both long sides of the bag, so it will open up book-style. Open it up carefully, and the dough will stick on one side of the bag. Then place the bag, dough side down, on the other layers. From there peel the bag up and spread the dough where it is uneven.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars

Makes 16 cookie bars.

Check out Risa from Baked Perfection’s original post here: SMORES

Hope the Crisps love em!