Peanut Butter Overload Chocolate Chip Cookies

You ready for these?  I mentioned in my last post about the Almond Joy Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies that I also made some with lots of peanut buttery goodness.  Well, here they are.  I know, took me long enough.  Trying to get my blogging mo-jo back. 

The reason for these cookies was because I’d bought a couple bags of the mini Nutter Butter cookies and after eating so many of them, the boys decided they were tired of them.  So I watched another bag of them just sit in my baking cupboard.  I decided to chop them up and put them in My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe, yes—these:

But that wasn’t enough.  I put an entire bag of peanut butter chips and Reese’s Pieces in them, too, along with chocolate chips.  Overload, I’m telling you.  If you are a peanut butter and chocolate fan, you’ll love these!  These were well liked at Kevin’s surprise 40th birthday party I had for him a couple weeks ago. 

Peanut Butter Overload Chocolate Chip Cookies, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

8 ½ ounces cake flour (2 cups minus 2 tablespoons) (lightly spooned into the measuring cup and swept level with a knife)

8 ½ ounces bread flour (1 and 2/3 cups) (lightly spooned and swept)

1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons coarse salt

2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups) unsalted butter, room temperature

10 ounces (1 ¼ cups) light brown sugar

8 ounces (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup Nutter Butter cookies, roughly chopped

10 ounce package peanut butter chips

10 ounce package mini Reese’s Pieces candies

8 ounces milk chocolate chips

3 ounces dark chocolate chips (you can use any combination and/or amount of chocolate you’d like)

Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl with a wire whisk. Set aside.

In bowl of electric mixer, cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes.  Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Then add the vanilla and combine.  Scrape the sides of the bowl. With mixer on low, add dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Put the mix-ins in the bowl and carefully fold together with rubber spatula just until combined.  Scoop with a 2 ounce (1/4 cup scoop).  You should get 24 scoops.  Put them on a wax paper lined baking sheet.  Cover with foil and freeze (or refrigerate).

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and put the cookies on an air bake sheet, only 5 cookies per sheet.  Bake from frozen for about 12 minutes.  Check the cookies, remove from the oven and with the sides of a metal spatula, if any of the cookies are misshapen and not nicely rounded, push the spatula lightly on to the cookies where they need rounded around the edges.  Decide if they need another minute or two in the oven.  Sometimes I think they do, sometimes they are perfect.  Let them cool on the baking sheet for 5-10 minutes.  Remove to a wire rack to cool until you can’t stand it anymore and have to taste one.  (If you have a convection oven, you can bake 2 or 3 cookie sheets at a time.  Every oven is different, but even though baking on convection you should lower the temperature 25 degrees, I still leave mine at 350 for these.)  Test yours for best results.

If you haven’t before, try kicking things up with chocolate chip cookies, be creative, add things to change them.  Mmmm!

Here’s some others I’ve done before with the same recipe.  (It’s the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, I’m telling you!!)  These are a favorite by many when I have freeze dried raspberries available to put in the cookies.

Raspberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies Gifted Three Ways—12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies

It’s Week 4 of 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies.  You might be thinking that seeing just another chocolate chip cookie is boring, been there, done that.  Well, here’s the thing—Chocolate Chip Cookies really are probably my favorite cookie to make and give away.  They are easy (I know this particular recipe by heart) and they are chocolate and taste great!  What’s not to love? 

So I believe that some kind of chocolate chip cookie should always adorn a Christmas cookie tray.  But here’s what I like to do even more sometimes, especially with this particular recipe, which has been my go-to chocolate chip cookie for a couple years now.  I was even asked to figure out a way to ship frozen cookie dough once we left Kansas and start a business selling just these cookies.  The person who made that suggestion wasn’t kidding, they would really miss my cookies, but I have yet to figure out a way to make that work and be profitable.  Whenever I make these cookies, I am always asked for the recipe and told these are the best chocolate chip cookies they’ve had.  Brag, brag, blah, blah, blah.  I have adapted this recipe enough that I do call it mine, but the true credit for it goes to Jacques Torres.  I believe that his use of cake flour and bread flour instead of regular all purpose flour and thinner (than chips) good quality dark chocolate disks are what set this recipe apart from other chocolate chip cookies.  So I make these often.  The family loves them.  And I often have cookie dough balls frozen and ready to go for all kinds of occasions or if I just need to give someone a few as a gift or thank you. 

These cookies are BIG (but I make them all different sizes).  A nice stack of big cookies are a great idea for kid’s teacher gifts, neighbors, friends, etc. 

Sometimes during the holidays, people often feel like they just couldn’t eat another cookie, candy, etc.  So another thing I’ve done in the past is give people a tub of frozen cookie dough balls and a note letting them know how to bake them and that they can save them for a time when they NEED a treat. 

  

Stack another layer on top with waxed paper in between (the cookie dough is already frozen).  I like to put another five on top of the eight and give a baker’s dozen.

Just like I love having cookie dough frozen and ready to bake, I’m sure anyone you give some to for the holidays will love it, too. 

Finally, if you really don’t feel like scooping cookie dough balls out onto a wax paper lined baking sheet and freezing them for gifts, I’ve also done it by just forming the dough into a log and freezing it.  You can give the gift also with a note letting someone know they can thaw, scoop and bake whenever they’d like.  I like to give the cookie dough log on a cute, festive tray.

After reminding myself that I’ve done this in the past, I will for sure be doing this for some of the holiday gifts I plan to give this year.  You can certainly make any other kind of cookie frozen ahead as well.  As much as I love all the holiday goodies, I would love having the options to save some for later.

My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies ;), by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from Jacques Torres

8 ½ ounces cake flour (2 cups minus 2 tablespoons) (lightly spooned into the measuring cup and swept level with a knife)

8 ½ ounces bread flour (1 and 2/3 cups) (lightly spooned and swept)

1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons coarse salt

2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups) unsalted butter, room temperature

10 ounces (1 ¼ cups) light brown sugar

8 ounces (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ¼ pounds chocolate chips or chopped chocolate (Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips are what I always use, which is what makes these cookies so good)

Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl with a wire whisk. Set aside.

In bowl of electric mixer, cream together butter and sugars until very light, about five minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. With mixer on low, add dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Stir in chocolate chips with rubber spatula. Optional--Put dough in a plastic container and refrigerate for at least a couple hours, but ideally 24 to 36 hours! (You think it won’t make a difference, but it’s really good! Although, I often only chill for a couple hours and these are still excellent cookies. Though it is not necessary to chill the dough at all—make, bake and eat!)

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and scoop dough into balls on sheet. Bake 9-15 minutes depending on size. ½ ounce cookies (small) baked 9 minutes. Regular sized cookies are about 1 ½ ounces and baked 11-13 minutes. (Made 9 ½ dozen ½ ounce cookies!)  2-3 oz. cookies are huge and delicious and more like NYT.

Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies—Pfeffernussen Cookies

I’m in Idaho visiting my parents.  So far, after getting here late Wednesday night, I’ve made “my” chocolate chip cookies so my niece, Kayla, could take them to her college classmates and share them. 

The cookies taste pretty good, but aren’t quite my usual favorite as I didn’t have cake and bread flour and just used all purpose instead and only had some store brand semi sweet chocolate chips instead of my favorite Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips.  But they were a big hit because everyone loves a BIG, gooey chocolate chip cookie!

But for this week’s Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies, I was flipping through my mom’s copy of Martha Stewart’s Cookies book looking for something and decided on the Pfeffernussen Cookies, really because it’s just so fun to say and I liked that they were covered in snow, I mean powdered sugar and they had nice spicy flavors.

I thought they were going to be more like shortbread or the Mexican Wedding Cookies, but they are actually kind of soft.  They are good and would definitely be a nice addition to your Christmas cookie trays.  My only small request for them would be to had some ground ginger next time.  They have every other spice in them, black pepper, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cloves—but no ginger.  I thought there was just a little something missing.  So if I made them again, I’d also add some ginger.  I only snapped a few pictures of them.

The cookies are supposed to be lightly shaken in a bag full of powdered sugar.   I did some dunked in a bowlful of powdered sugar, but kind of liked how they looked when I just sprinkled some sugar on with a powdered sugar shaker, like they got just a little light dusting of snow.

 

I only slightly changed Martha Stewart’s recipe as it didn’t have any salt and called for unsalted butter, so I added a little salt, and should have added some ginger.  Still, these are some good cookies and if you’re wondering, Pfeffer means “pepper” in German and Nuss means “nut”—which refers more to the shape than the taste, since they have no nuts.

Pfeffernussen, adapted from Martha Stewart

• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup firmly packed light-brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup unsulfured molasses
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• I think they could use some ginger!

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Place the confectioners' sugar in a brown paper bag. I just dunked each cookie in a bowl of powdered sugar, some I even just sprinkled with powdered sugar in a fine mesh strainer and liked those best.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, pepper, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, and baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. Place butter, brown sugar, and molasses in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg and vanilla. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture; beat until just combined. Pinch off dough in tablespoon amounts; roll into 1 1/4-inch balls. Arrange balls 1 1/2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets. (Dough can be frozen at this point, covered tightly with plastic wrap, up to 1 month.)
4. Bake until cookies are golden and firm to the touch with slight cracking, about 15 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer sheets to a wire rack to cool slightly, about 10 minutes. Working in batches, place cookies in paper bag; shake until well coated. Let cool completely on wire rack. Store in an airtight container.

Want more ideas for Christmas cookies—the holiday will be here before we know it!  Check out all the links to the other Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies Bakers/Bloggers below.  Happy Baking! 

**Disclaimer—the cookies are much better in texture and flavor the next day! ;)

How cute is a sleeping baby!  One Wednesday we drove at 3 p.m. for 6 plus hours to Idaho, the last hour was horrible for Sam who kept crying “Wanna get out” and saying his back hurt.  :(  Moments later I looked back at him and he looked so peaceful.  Love this guy!  (Then he woke up about 10 minutes before we arrived at my parents, of course, crying.  We’re happy to be home!

Birthday Recap, Utah, and Happy Spring???? and My Adaptation of the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Let’s start with Happy Spring everyone!  Here’s what we woke up to this morning!

I must say, rather annoying!  It rainy/icy/slushed Friday afternoon, then by the evening, it began snowing.  When I went to bed, there was already a few inches on the ground.  It was windy all night, so it’s hard to tell how much snow fell.  About 8 inches at our doorstep, which always seems to pile up.  Some places of the driveway had a good inch of slush under the snow, it’s was heavy and a great workout for me.  It has been snowing all day.  Good thing is, it hasn’t stuck to the driveway much, yet.  It’s still snowing late into Saturday night.  Sigh!  And I think it’s supposed to be in the 60’s by Monday. 

The good thing is we were in Utah, saw on the news that the storm was coming, decided to leave a day early and drove straight through (21 hours!---ahhh!)  We usually stay a night in Denver, but knew if we did that the storm would be in Wyoming and Colorado and we could get stuck there.  We left Thursday at 4 a.m. and got home just before 1 a.m. the next day.  Sigh.  Poor little Sammie was not a happy camper.  He kept crying, “I want to walk,” as he’d struggle in his car seat.  We persevered and are glad we got home before the snow!

Before we left, Sam got a few more birthday presents.

   

While we were in Utah, we had a Smith gathering with lots of family.  It was Emilee’s birthday (one of Kevin’s nieces) on the 15th and Sam’s on the 16th, so we had a yummy dinner that Cindy prepared and I made cake.

Since Sam loves the zoo and animals so much, I went with a cute paw print on some rainbow cupcakes.  (I made these with a box mix.  It’s hard to bake from scratch when you’re not in your own home!)

The paws are made with some devil’s food cookies, and Junior Caramels.  I thought they were pretty cute.

The kids all devoured these.  There were ump-teen kids there.

For the adults and whoever else didn’t want cupcakes, I made my Divine Carrot Cake.  I doubled the recipe and baked it in a 9x13 pan.  I left out the coconut, because some people don’t like coconut (whatever! ;))  I used pecans instead of walnuts.

I made cream cheese frosting to go with it, which is also what I frosted the cupcakes with.  The carrot cake is so good and moist and flavorful.  I used white whole wheat flour, so it was healthy!  ahem.

And I think I did a not-too-shabby job with the lettering, which is not one of my strong points.  At least I don’t think this would be Cake Wrecks worthy!

 

This photo of the carrot cake is from my original post.  If you like carrot cake, this is certainly one to try.  I’ve even made cupcakes with it and you could do two 8-inch round cakes and layer it.

I fried an egg for Taylor for breakfast one morning while we were in Utah.  I know double yolks are pretty common, but have you ever seen a quadruple?

That is not 2 eggs or four.  Okay, it’s one egg and four yolks.  (I had some extra after making the white cake mix for the rainbow cupcakes.  Taylor loves the yolk, especially when he can dip his toast in it.  This was A LOT of yolk.  His plate was just a swimmin’ in it.  But he ate a lot of it (I’m happy about any fat and protein I can get in this kid!)

While in Utah, staying at Kevin’s sister Cindy’s (Thanks for letting us stay with you Clydes!), I wanted to make them some of the New York Times chocolate chip cookies that I love so much, I even bought some cake flour and bread flour and good chocolate chips.  Then I got back to their house and realized they only had margarine!  What to do?  So just to experiment and see what would happen, I made half a batch with the margarine. 

They weren’t half bad!  I was afraid using an oven I’m not familiar with that I’d overbake them, so I slightly underbaked them.  They were still good and got eaten up.  I have actually adapted the recipe quite a bit from the fabulous and “fancy” New York Times recipe, so here is the recipe as I make them.  One big thing is I almost never chill the dough.  And I don’t put extra salt on the cookies.  But I will stand by the using of cake flour and bread flour in the recipe and I gotta say, way better with good chocolate chips (I often use Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips) and butta!  ;)

New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies, adapted by Katrina Smith

8 ½ ounces cake flour (2 cups minus 2 tablespoons)

8 ½ ounces bread flour (1 and 2/3 cups)

1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons coarse salt

2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups) unsalted butter, room temperature

10 ounces (1 ¼ cups) light brown sugar

8 ounces (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ¼ pounds chocolate chips or chopped chocolate

Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl with a wire whisk. Set aside.

In bowl of electric mixer, cream together butter and sugars until very light, about five minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. With mixer on low, add dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Stir in chocolate with rubber spatula. Optional--Put dough in a plastic container and refrigerate for at least a couple hours, but ideally 24 to 36 hours! (You think it won’t make a difference, but it’s really good! Although, I often only chill for a couple hours and these are still excellent cookies.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and scoop dough into balls on sheet. Bake 9-15 minutes depending on size. ½ ounce cookies baked 9 minutes. Regular sized cookies are about 1 ½ ounces and baked 11-13 minutes. (Made 9 ½ dozen ½ ounce cookies!)  2-3 oz. cookies are huge and delicious and more like NYT.

Eagle Mountain, Utah.  Our new house is one of those out there in the distance.  You can see it from Cindy’s house where the picture was taken.

For Sam’s birthday, we went to the SLC Hogle Zoo.  It was a perfect day.  But for some reason that morning, Sam was walking with a limp and said his leg hurt.  We think he must have got up in the night and fallen in the room we were sleeping in.  So he had to sit in a stroller through the whole zoo. 

He hobbled around a bit for a couple days, but is fine now.

See the monkeys?

My almost-12-year-old monkey refuses to be on camera!

How cute is this baby elephant?!

And this baby giraffe?

The baby is already 7 feet tall!

How about them Cougars?  Uh, let’s not talk about that tonight!  (BYU reference, while we’re on the subject, let’s not talk about Jayhawks either.  Sigh.)

And now just a few more random photos.  I made pancakes for breakfast yesterday.  Parker LOVES to play with his food, sometimes he’s still messing around with it after everyone else is done eating.  But he was pretty proud of his Picachu from Pokemon.

Taylor and Sam were playing with a box of diapers yesterday.  Hey, when you’ve packed most of the toys, you gotta make due, right!

And this morning, Sam came in our room while we were still asleep (he often does!), but I let him climb in bed with us about 7:45.  We got up shortly after that, and Sam slept all comfy in our bed until after 11 a.m.!

Ahh, how would that be?