TWD—Peanut Butter Crisscrosses and Parker’s 9th Birthday

I do find it amazing how quickly the weeks go by from Tuesday to Tuesday.  Here we are again with another recipe from Dorie Greenspan as we bake our way through Baking From My Home to Yours in our Tuesday's With Dorie group.  This week’s recipe was chosen by Jasmine from Jasmine Cuisine.  She chose Peanut Butter Crisscrosses (page 78). 

Good ol’ classic peanut butter cookies.  I made the full recipe, which makes a lot of cookies.  I only had creamy peanut butter, so that is what I used.  I left out the nutmeg.  And I didn’t have any peanuts to add to the dough.   I made a few dozen cookies with just the recipe (sans peanuts).

These are good peanut butter cookies.  I only baked them for 10 minutes, not the suggested 12, because I wanted them to be more soft and chewy than crispy.  They are.

With some of the dough, I added about half a cup of semi sweet chocolate chips.  Almost nothing is better than chocolate and peanut butter.  I liked these better than the plain ones.

With even more of the dough, I decided to add some chopped up Butterfinger Candy Bars.  It worked great with the recent Butterfinger Cookies I made and posted.  I love the texture Butterfingers give to cookies.

These were my favorite of the cookies.

Thank you Jasmine, great pick.  You can get the recipe for these peanut butter cookies on her blog.

Guess what, if you haven’t heard?  Dorie has a new cookbook out, Around My French Table.  A new cooking/baking group is starting (October 1).  You can join in, too.  Get a copy of Dorie’s book and cook/bake along with the group, French Friday's with Dorie!

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Parker had a birthday and turned 9 years old.  I made him a special breakfast that he likes—Banana/Nutella Crepes.

Taylor made him a birthday crown.

We all went miniature golfing as a family on Monday for Parker’s birthday.  Since it was Labor Day, it was super crowded and quite the fun time golfing with Sam hitting the ball all crazy and not waiting his turn, but all in all, it was fun.  Later in the evening, after making a steak dinner (Parker LOVES A-1 Steak Sauce!), Parker opened his presents and we had cake and ice cream. 

I’m loving all these fairly normal, cute, smiley pictures of Parker, since almost always usually goofy in pictures.

Oh well, it couldn’t last forever.  ;)

For Parker’s big gift, which is what he really wanted, we sent him on a little compass driven scavenger hunt.  Kevin had placed little notes hidden outside with different directions on them and Parker had to use a compass to get to each one, with the final one being under the deck where his new skateboard, helmet and pads were hiding.  It turned out really well.

Almost there.

Parker decided he wanted banana cake after he really liked the Banana Caramel Cake I recently made.  So I made Dorie’s Lots of Ways Banana Cake.  I made it pretty plain-no nuts, no coconut, just bananas.  I put a layer of caramel ice cream topping in between the two cake layers.  And I made a Caramel Frosting recipe from Paula Deen that I found on Food Network’s website.  The frosting set up super fast and wasn’t creamy like I wanted it, but it actually tasted pretty good.

Kevin even ate a slice of cake, including the frosting.  He later said it was because it was smothered with chocolate ice cream.

Happy Birthday, Parker!  We love you and are happy you are part of our family!  I love the way you always enjoy life and make the most of everything you do!