Peanut Butter Cookies

Baked on 12/17/10

Wow... I haven't updated this in forever. I have been baking, but I've just been using the same recipes I've posted about before...or I didn't have or make the time to blog about new recipes. Or the new recipes aren't good enough to post about. I did make chocolate chip pretzel cookies, but they were nothing great, so I probably won't post about them. The idea is interesting though. Here is the recipe if you want to try it. They weren't bad...they just weren't outstanding or flavorful enough for me. Maybe I should have done a second taste test later since baked goods taste different after they've been sitting around for awhile.

Anyway, for these peanut butter cookies, I used a recipe from 500 Cookies by Phillipa Vanstone, which my brother gave me awhile ago. I made chocolate shortbread with that book too. These were good if you love peanut butter. Also, I used unsalted peanut butter, so that might have affected the flavor of mine significantly. I made some with mini chocolate chips, and I liked those more than the plain peanut butter ones.

Copycat Levain Bakery Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Baked 4.23.10 for the Berkeley trip that never happened.

I couldn't find dark cocoa powder anywhere, so I gave up and just used a dark chocolate cocoa mix and decreased the amount of sugar from the recipe. I think the only problem with this was that the mix had those added ingredients like milk powder, which probably all messed up the dough. They're supposed to be hard, dense, rock-like with little spread, and very dark chocolatey, but these spread a lot (as you can see), and they weren't dark enough to me. BUT if I just eat these without expecting them to taste like Levain Bakery's cookies, then these are pretty good. Got the copycat recipe from Lisa Michele, whose cookies look close to the real things! I WILL try again someday with the right ingredients. Now that I've tried these, I really love the idea of dark chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips. So good.

Nooooo to the picture below:



Here's how many I made: 21 huge cookies.

Levain Bakery Copycat Dark Chocolate Peanut butter Chip Cookies (1 dozen cookies when done right supposedly; 21 flatter ones when done my way - oops)

• 2 sticks cold & cubed unsalted butter *NO! Don't leave them cold!! They're impossible to make fluffy right away. Stupid, stupid idea. I waited until the butter got soft because I just couldn't stand it, and there's no chemical purpose for keeping it cold because it all gets mooshed together AND no other recipe I've ever read that wasn't for scones or pie crust said to leave the butter cold. OK. Rant over.
  
• 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup good quality dark cocoa powder
• 2 1/4 to 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1/4 tsp Kosher salt
• 3/4 to 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 2 cups peanut butter chips
  

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2) In bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle (I did this by hand), cream together butter & sugar until well blended and fluffy
3) Add eggs & beat until well-incorporated, & then beat in cocoa powder
4) Mix in flour, salt & baking powder until just combined
5) Gently fold in remaining ingredients
6) Transfer dough to clean work surface and gently mix dough by hand to ensure even distribution of ingredients
7) Divide into 12 equal portions (I ended up making 21 mounds because I was so afraid the cookies would smoosh together, which they kinda did anyway), **~4 oz each, and place each on sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Bake in the oven 16-20 minutes depending on how gooey and raw-like you like the middles, taking care not to overbake.
8) Let cool on a rack & store what you don’t immediately eat in an airtight container

LISA MICHELE's NOTES:

Note – The Levain Bakery doesn’t use vanilla extract in their cookies, as they feel it’s unecessary. However, some feel you need it. You can add 1 tsp to 1 T to each recipe if desired. Just add it after each egg is incorporated.

** Note – The Levain Bakery uses 6 oz of cookie dough per cookie. As mentioned above, If you want 12 cookies out of the above recipes, a little over 4 oz per cookie (4.1 to 4.2 oz. Use a kitchen scale) will get you that. If you want to use 6 oz of cookie dough per cookie, you’ll probably get only 6-8 cookies. However, a little over 4 oz makes a cookie just as thick and huge, so you don’t even notice the difference.

*** Note – Regarding the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter cookies. I mostly use Dutch-process cocoa. If you use basic, natural unsweetened cocoa (you know, the Hershey’s in the brown can or whatever), add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp baking soda (I just use a heaping 1/4 tsp when using regular baking cocoa) to the dry ingredients. Also, if they’re too ‘chocolatey’ and rich for you, use only 1/4 cup cocoa powder, and add 1/4 cup extra flour.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes w/ Peanut Butter Frosting

Oh man...if you love peanut butter, you have to try these (I think my only complaint is that they're a little too sweet, but I think most people would be fine with this level of sweetness). Julie and Jenny came over because the three of us LOVE peanut butter. We didn't use Reese's Pieces because I was dumb and forgot, but I wouldn't have eaten them anyway (bleh!)...so sorry Julie & Jenny! :(

Baked on 7/31/09


Peanut butter-y frosting:


Peanut Butter Cupcakes w/ Peanut Butter Frosting recipe (original HERE):

Peanut butter cupcakes:

2/3 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 cup creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp baking powder
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1) Cream together shortening and sugar
2) Add eggs & beat well
3) Add peanut butter & beat well
4) Add milk and vanilla extract alternately with the baking powder and flour (this part was funny...we weren't even sure if we were doing it correctly because it took awhile and seemed weird, although we DID understand why we had to alternate the ingredients like that)
5) Fill the muffin liners ~3/4 full with batter
6) Bake for 20-25 min or until golden brown & a toothpick comes out clean
7) Cool cupcakes completely on a wire rack & frost with peanut butter frosting

Peanut Butter Frosting

1 - 16oz box (1lb) powdered sugar
1 - stick margarine, softened (1/2 cup) ** I used butter
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1 - tsp vanilla extract
Milk (~3 - 4 tablespoons)

1) Cream powdered sugar and margarine together
2) Add peanut butter & mix well
3) Add vanilla extract & enough milk to make it easy enough to spread
4) Beat mixture together until you have the desired consistency
5) Frost cupcakes when completely cooled

One-Bowl Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cupkins

These were really fast, easy, and pretty good (kinda bland if you like flavor and lots of sugar though...and on the dry side). The original recipe calls them cupcakes, but I call them "cupckins" because they're denser than cupcakes but not quite as dense as muffins. I know technically they should be either "cupcins" or "muffcakes," but "cupcins" sounds better...and I wanted to use the "k" instead of the "c" because people might pronounce it "cupsins." Oh--and "muffkins" sounds dirty. I swear I heard somewhere that "muff" is something dirty.

Anyways, Michelle came over the other night and had a sudden desire to bake (at midnight lol)...so we made these!


Some were mini:

POOF!


RECIPE (original recipe here):

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar ** We only used 1 cup **
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter ** We used crunchy **
3 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons baking cocoa (cocoa powder)
1 1/4 cups 2% milk ** We used non-fat **
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl; mix for 30 seconds while scraping bowl
3. Spoon cupcake batter into liners until they are 2/3 full
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean
5. Cool 10 minutes in pans. Move to wire rack to cool completely

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins

* I originally posted this 1.13.2008, but I've made these two (?) times since then.

* bad flash/lighting...I know...

I found the original recipe at BakingBites.com, one of my favorite food blogs.

Here is my recipe (the only changes were that I used semi-sweet choc. chips and I cut down on the brown sugar):

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup brown sugar (a little less)
6 tbsp butter, melted and cooled (actually, I used part of a margarine bar)
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
2 large eggs
1 cup non-fat milk
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the melted butter, peanut butter, eggs and milk until smooth. Pour into flour mixture and stir until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Divide batter into muffin tin, filling each cup to the top.
5. Bake for 17-20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean and the top of the muffin springs back when lightly pressed.
6. Cool on a wire rack (or just on a plate or tray).

Makes 12. * It really did make 12 full muffins; the picture is misleading because I ate the 12th one.

THE RESULTS:
* I love these because the muffin base itself isn't too sweet and the tops are PERFECT for muffin-top lovers (they're nice and big!). They were easy to make too! I would definitely make them again. I like the little bits of peanuts too. AND they smelled wonderful. I think the peanut butter flavor could be stronger, but since Nicole, the creator of BakingBites.com, says that peanut butter tends to make baked goods dry and dense, I'm not sure if adding more peanut butter would be a good idea. I think anyone else would like the peanut butter flavor though...I tend to not be able to taste pumpkin in pumpkin foods, so maybe there's something wrong with my taste buds. Also, I had trouble whisking the peanut butter in with the rest of the ingredients because the peanut butter kept getting stuck inside the whisk. Had to use my (clean) finger quite a bit. Overall, YUMMY. I plan on freezing these and saving them for when this semester starts stressing me out.

Outrageous [Peanut Butter] Chocolate Chip Cookies

The "Peanut Butter" is in brackets because the original recipe is just called "Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies," which I think is too misleading. These are wayyy good. I've been having good luck with new recipes lately. Probably has something to do with the fact that I mostly use highly-rated recipes on Allrecipes.com, which is where I found this recipe, and other places. So the first picture is sideways. Oh well. Let's pretend that was intentional.

They didn't spread out that much! Perfect!

Such great texture! Chocolate chips, oatmeal, and peanuts together = YUM!

RECIPE (original one here; I used a tiny bit less white sugar and then I messed up on the brown sugar by adding 1/2 cup instead of 1/4...and then to compensate I cut the chocolate chips in half):

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar *I used less than 1/2 cup*
1/3 cup packed brown sugar *I accidentally used a little less than 1/2 cup*
1/2 cup peanut butter *I used chunky*
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips *I used a little bit more than 1/2 cup*

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In medium bowl, cream together butter, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth.
3. Stir in peanut butter, vanilla and egg until well blended.
4. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the batter just until moistened.
5. Mix in the oats and chocolate chips until evenly distributed.
6. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto lightly greased cookie sheets.
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes until the edges start to brown.
8. Cool on cookie sheets for ~5 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

I'm making these again!! Giving these to two people tomorrow (oh--and to my parents).