Day 1 of 12: Peanut Butter Cookies (with Milk Chocolate Chunks & Peanut Butter Morsels) :)
It’s December! Fall quarter has ended, finals are over, and I’m back home in Portland. :)
With Christmas just around the corner, just about every baking blogger is scurrying to compile gift baskets full of goodies to deliver to everybody they know and love. I’ve stumbled upon a few baking bloggers who traditionally bake “12 Days of Cookies.” This concept is pretty straight forward: during the month of December, you bake 12 different types of cookies before Christmas. Due to the mayhem of the quarter, I haven’t been able to bake as much as I’ve wanted to (although I did get to squeeze in a few baking sessions here and there). So, 12 days of baking 12 different cookies? Seems like the perfect way to get back into the baking groove to me! I’m definitely up for the challenge, and I’ve gathered so many different ideas! Whether my brother is ready to eat 12 different types of cookies.. well, that’s another story.
Today (my first full day back home) has been dubbed Day 1 of my 12 Days of Cookies. This recipe was originally used as a “Peanut Butter Blossom” cookie (just a plain PB cookie with a Kiss plopped right in the middle). The Kiss in the middle didn’t really appeal to me… Don’t get me wrong, the PB Blossoms are adorable, and look delicious. But I’ve been on a search for the perfect peanut butter cookie recipe for what seems like forever, that I couldn’t let the huge Kiss in the middle distract me. I omitted the Kiss, and threw in some milk chocolate chunks and peanut butter morsels. The result? Well, let’s just say I’m definitely heading in the right direction for finding the perfect peanut butter cookie recipe. :)
These cookies turned out soft and chewy (all at once, my favorite!). Usually, my peanut butter cookies turn out way too crumbly, but that definitely wasn’t the case here. The peanut butter flavor shined, and the milk chocolate complemented the peanut butter perfectly (don’t think I’ll be pairing semi-sweet chocolate with peanut butter ever again). The tiny boost of peanut butter flavor offered by the peanut butter morsels was lovely.
My only problem with these? They didn’t spread much, and came out a bit more fluffy than I prefer (I’m one of those flat-but-not-too-flat cookie lovers..). After seeing how fluffy the first batch turned out, I decided to flatten them. I couldn’t decide whether I liked the flattened or fluffy ones more. The fluffy ones are displayed in the photo, and, after taking the pictures, the fluffy ones definitely started growing on me..
Anyway. This recipe is definitely a keeper. My mom tried a few and loved them. Due to my baking at odd hours of the night, I haven’t been able to share these with anybody else yet. These are definitely my most successful attempt at baking peanut butter cookies, though. :)
