Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

Another cookie that we make for Christmas is the chocolate covered peanut butter ball.  It is a variation on Ohio’s Buckeye.  This recipe was made by my Mother in my childhood.

Here is the recipe:

1 cup Unsalted Butter

2 cups Graham Cracker Crumbs

1 cup Shredded Coconut

1 cup Peanut Butter

1 pound Powdered Sugar

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

12 ounces Semisweet or Dark Chocolate

This is the mise en place for the chocolate covered peanut butter balls.

This is the chocolate.  If you are using chocolate chips you won’t need to chop it up.

The butter should be melted.

The peanut butter and coconut get mixed together in a bowl with the melted butter and vanilla.

This is the mixture at this point.

Then, the graham cracker crumbs and powdered sugar gets added.

The mixture should then be formed by hand into about one inch balls.

The chocolate is melted in a double boiler.  Here I’m just using a Pyrex bowl over a tall pan with water.

The balls get covered in the chocolate and set aside to cool on waxed paper.

Here is the completed batch of cookies.

Spicy Peanut Butter Cookies

This week I bring you my own recipe for spicy peanut butter cookies.  Peanut butter cookies are some of my favorite kind of cookie.  These were inspired a few years back by finding a spicy peanut butter in a grocery store.  It was “The Heat Is On” peanut butter from Peanut Butter & Co.  They make some other great peanut butter flavors that can also be substituted in this recipe.  This particular spicy peanut butter add heat with chili powder, cayenne peppers, crushed red peppers, and paprika.  The resulting peanut butter cookie isn’t overly spicy, but has a nice flavor and a slow burn that hits you over time.  The spicy peanut butter can sometimes be found in normal grocery stores or Whole Foods.  If you can’t find any, the company does ship it on their website.

Here’s the recipe (makes about 3-4 dozen cookies):

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 & 1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup spicy peanut butter (The Heat Is On)

1 cup softened butter

2 large eggs

2 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Some extra granulated sugar

Here is the mise en place for the cookies.

Like most cookies, these start with creaming the butter with the sugar.  In this cake, it also includes the peanut butter.  Some peanut butter cookie recipes call for adding the peanut butter after the dry ingredients have been added, I’ve found it easier to do at the beginning.  Mixing at the end tends to cause you to over mix the flour and you end up with tough cookies.

Here are the two eggs about to go into the cookie dough.

Here is the cookie dough after adding the eggs.

This is the final cookie dough after the dry ingredients have been mixed in.  It should still be pretty sticky, but firm enough to shape into balls and hold its shape.

The dough then gets rolled into balls about 1 & 1/2 inches in diameter and placed onto a baking sheet.  I always prefer using a silpat covered air bake cookie sheet when baking cookies.

Then dip a fork into the extra sugar and press down each cookie twice.  Once in one direction, the second time in the opposite direction.  You’ll want to dip the fork into the sugar between each press so that it doesn’t stick to the cookie.  If you are making different flavors of peanut butter cookies, you can experiment with different utensils and creating a different pattern on top each flavor of cookie.  That way you can tell which flavor is which.

Here are the cookies after baking for about 11 minutes.  There is one missing because my wife couldn’t wait until I took the picture to eat one.

And of course, here is a close up of one of the cookies.

Kitchen Sink Cookies

This post I decided to make some Kitchen Sink Cookies.  It is my own recipe based loosely on the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Tollhouse.  It was inspired by the flavor of the month cookie for June from Cougar Mountain Baking Company: Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal. 

Here’s the recipe:

1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter

1/2 Cup Peanut Butter

3/4 Cup Brown Sugar

3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar

2 Eggs

1 Teaspoon vanilla

1/2 Teaspoon Fresh Nutmeg

1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

1 Teaspoon Salt

1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

1 3/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour

2 Cup Oats

1 Cup Chocolate Chips

 

Here’s the mise en place for the cookies.  Well, without the eggs since I forgot to include them for the picture.

Here I’ve grated the nutmeg using a Microplane grater.

Measuring out the peanut butter.

The butter and peanut butter get mixed together and then creamed with the sugar.

Here’s the creamed sugar, peanut butter, and butter.

Then the remaining wet ingredients and spices get mixed in.

Here’s the recipe slowly taking shape as I decide how much of each ingredient I’m going to use.

Then the dry ingredients, except the chocolate chips, get mixed in.

Then the chocolate chips get folded into the cookie dough, so that they don’t break up.

The dough gets rolled into flattened balls and put on a cookie sheet.  I always use a silpat on top of an airbake cookie sheet when baking cookies.

They bake for about 14 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

The recipe makes about 2-3 dozen cookies, depending on how large you make each cookie.