A Spoonful of Sugar (or Just Peanut Butter)

You know those foods that are healthy as long as eaten in moderation?  Like avocados, for instance, they are great for you – healthy fats, fiber, vitamins, all sorts of good stuff.  But once you have about 6 in one sitting, sadly it is probably not so good for you…  The same holds true for peanut butter. 

Yet I’m really somewhat obsessed with eating lots anyhow.  I put peanut butter on my toast pretty much every morning (I eat the same thing basically every day for breakfast – whole wheat toast, peanut butter and sliced banana, delicious!) or I have peanut butter as a snack on a sliced apple or a rice cake.  I even had a bonding moment with a friend a while back when we both realized we would eat peanut butter straight out of the jar, by the spoonful.  Say what you will, but you just can’t beat it!

I take that back… you can beat that, when you mix peanut butter with chocolate and put it in a cookie! 🙂

Tonight I gave into my dessert craving and decided to make Baked‘s Peanut Butter Cookies.  They are sugary, rich, crisp cookies loaded with chocolate chips and filled with that great peanut butter flavor. 

But beware, moderation will be difficult with how good these cookies are!

And sometimes you just need a spoonful of cookie dough

Peanut Butter Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chunks

Adapted from Baked’s cookbook, Baked: New Frontiers in Baking (basically my favorite book ever)

Prep time: 25 minutes; Total time: 2 hours, 37 minutes (includes 2 hours of chill time)

Makes 24 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4C flour
• 2t baking soda
• 1t salt
• 1C (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1C granulated sugar
• 1C firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1t vanilla
• 1C crunchy peanut butter – I used crunchy, all-natural with no sugar added. I think the recipe definitely has enough sugar anyway, so if you use peanut butter with sugar in it, just reduce the granulated sugar by 1/4-1/2C. Feel free to also use creamy peanut butter, but I think the nuts add a nice texture.
• 6oz milk chocolate chunks

1. Sift the flour, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
2. Using an electric mixer with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars together until fluffy.
3. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs one at a time.
4. Add the vanilla and peanut butter, mix until combined.
5. Add the flour mixture about 1/3 at a time. Blend until combined.
6. Fold in the chocolate chunks using a spatula
7. Cover the bowl tightly and refrigerate for 1-3hours.  *The longer you allow the cookie dough to chill in the refridgerator will reduce any risk of the cookies spreading too much when baking.
8. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
9. Spoon out 1-2 tablespoons of cookie dough, roll into a ball and drop onto a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray.
10. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the tops of the cookies just start to brown.  After taking them out of the oven, allow the cookies a few minutes to cool and finish baking while on the baking sheet.

Enjoy!  I suggest with a large glass of cold milk, perfect for dunking the cookies into 🙂