If you like peanut butter you’re going to love these chocolate chip cookies. They’re full of that peanut butter and chocolate taste that YOU love.
Or so I hear. For I do NOT like peanut butter. Yuk.
Why would you ruin a perfectly good cookie by putting peanut butter in it? Well, in this case you do it because it happens to be your boyfriend’s favourite cookie and you know you’ll probably get out of doing the washing up for a few nights if you make them.
I like peanuts. I like butter. It actually annoys me that i don’t like peanut butter. It’s one of the few foods I don’t like.
And I’ve tried. Oh I’ve tried. The only way I can tolerate it is on a crumpet with cream cheese and vegemite (because that’s how Australians roll). And really all I’ve done is put so many other flavours in with the offensive peanut butter I’ve sufficiently disguised it.
The only way I can eat peanut butter - sufficiently disguised.
But I hear they’re yummy. So here’s the recipe. Everyone else seemed to like ‘em.
Ingredients
2 ½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
225 grams butter (2 sticks/8 ounces depending on where you hail from) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup peanut butter- crunchy or smooth, but not natural
1 cup light brown sugar (packed)
¾ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 ½ cup chocolate chips, whatever kind you have on hand
And…
1/2 cup granulated sugar for rolling cookies.
Method:
- Preheat to 180C. Line two baking sheets with baking paper.
- In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.
- Using beaters and a another large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed for a minute or two, until smooth and creamy. Add the peanut butter and beat for another minute. Add the sugars and beat for 3 minutes more.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition.
- Add the dry ingredients, and hand mix with wooden spoon until they just disappear. Mix in the chocolate chips. You’ll have a soft a pliable dough.
- Pour the 1/2 cup sugar into a small bowl. Working with a level tablespoonful of dough for each cookie, roll the dough between your palms into balls and drop the balls, a couple at a time, into the sugar. Roll the balls around in the sugar to coat them, then place on the backing sheet, leaving 2 inches between them.
- Dip the tines (word of the day!) of the fork in the sugar and press the tines against each ball first in one direction and then in a perpendicular direction – you should have a flattened rough of dough with crisscross indentations.
- Bake the dough for 12 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and from front to back at the midway point. When done, the cookies will be lightly colored and still be a little soft. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for a minute before transferring them to a cooling rack. Cool to room temperature.
Repeat with the remaining dough, making sure to cool the baking sheets between batches.
Makes: … a lot. You’ll hate me here but by the time I wrote this up I had already taken some to work and the boy had eaten a lot as well, and I wasn’t sure how many I originally had. I remember it was at least 40. It’s a big batch.
Healthy? Well, no, no, I don’t believe these are. They’re about 175 calories a cookie if you make 40. But I hear they’re yummy. Maybe I should start a new category…
Yummy? Yes!
Storage: Keep in an airtight container… I dare say for as long as it’ll take you to finish the batch.
Source: From Joy the Baker, adapted from Baking
