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.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

For Christmas every year my wife and I bake cookies for friends and coworkers.  This post, plus the following two will be a few of the cookies we made this year.

Chocolate chip cookies are a staple baked good.  We always have the ingredients on hand and we make them frequently throughout the year. 

This recipe is a variation on the Tollhouse cookie recipe and yields a somewhat softer and cake-ier cookie than the original recipe.  The variation comes from my mother: the flour is increased and the ratio of brown sugar to granulated sugar has been altered.

Here is the recipe:

3 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 teaspoon Salt

1 cup Softened Unsalted Butter (2 sticks)

1 cup Brown Sugar

1/2 cup Granulated Sugar

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

2 Large Eggs

~2 cups Semisweet Chocolate Chips

This is the mise en place for the chocolate chip cookies.  I’m making a double batch, so the quantities will be doubled.

The butter and sugars go into a bowl and get creamed together.

Then the eggs and vanilla get mixed in.

This is what the mixture will look like after the eggs and vanilla get mixed in.

Next up is the dry ingredients.  When making chocolate chip cookies, rather than getting another bowl dirty i usually just put the baking soda and salt in with the first cup of flour.

This is the cookie dough after all the flour has been mixed in.

Lastly, the chocolate chips get mixed in.

The dough then gets dropped onto a cookie sheet.  You can vary the size, but I usually go with about 1-2 heaping tablespoons.

The cookies then bake at 375 Fahrenheit for 8-12 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

It’s Halloween and I’m helping to throw a Halloween party.  As part of that I’ve made a pumpkin cheesecake (recipe courtesy of Good Housekeeping).  It’s my first attempt at a real cheesecake and not one of those refrigerator varieties.  I think it’s turned out well, though I have yet to cut into it as the party is tonight.  The recipe isn’t overly complicated.  There is a water bath, but it’s nothing too hard to deal with.

This is the mise en place for the graham cracker crumb crust.

The graham cracker crumbs and sugar go into a bowl.

Then get mixed together with the melted butter until thoroughly coated and slightly moist.

The crust gets pressed into the bottom of a springform pan.  The crust then gets baked for about 10 minutes to set up.  After cooling on a wire rack, it is ready for the cheesecake batter.

Next up is the batter for the cheesecake.  This is the mise en place for it.

First, the cream cheese gets mixed until it is smooth.

Then the sugar gets mixed in.

The pumpkin, sour cream, and spices also get mixed in.

Finally, the eggs get mixed in, one at a time.

After making sure that the batter is thoroughly mixed, it goes into the springform pan.  The pan here is wrapped in aluminum foil and placed into a large roasting pan.  The foil helps make sure that no water gets into the cake since the springform pans isn’t water tight.

At this point, boiling water goes into the roasting pan and everything goes into the oven to bake for an hour to an hour and a half.

While the cake is baking, the topping can be made.  This is the mise en place for the topping.

It’s a quick and easy topping.  Everything just goes into a bowl.

And gets whisked together.  When the cheesecake is nearly done, the topping should be spread on top the cake.  The cheesecake goes back into the oven to bake for another five minutes.

Here is the final cheesecake cooling on a wire rack after baking.