Chewy Chocolate and Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

I absolutely love cookies.

I always feel like Angelica from Rugrats when I’m around fresh baked cookies.

(Source)

I can’t be the only one.

So in the quest to create the perfect cookie, I started thinking about what I look for in a cookie.

1. Must be chewy.  I love chewy cookies.
2. Must be dense.  No flat cookies for me.
3. Must be flavorful.  I love a good sugar cookie but when I crave a fresh baked cookie, I crave lots of flavors.
4. Must include chocolate.
5. Must be easy.
6. Should probably include peanut butter because what goes better with chocolate than peanut butter?

Thus, the Chewy Chocolate and Peanut Butter Chip cookie was born.

It’s simple really.  Not too much different than your typical chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Gather your ingredients like usual.  Don’t forget to separate one of the eggs so you have one full egg and one yolk.  Just discard the white.  Or make an egg-white omelet.

Melting the butter helps make your cookies chewy.  Did you know that?

When measuring dry ingredients for baking it is important to remember never to pack in the flour.  You should use a scoop to spoon the flour into your measuring cup then level it off.

I like to beat my sugar before adding any wet ingredients so that the brown sugar doesn’t clump up.

Oh it just looks so yummy.  Don’t forget to sneak a taste 😉

These are in no way healthy.  If you’re on Weight Watchers Plus Points, each cookie is 4 points.

I use a 1 tbsp ice cream scoop.  It’s quick, easy, eliminates mess, and ensures your cookies are all the same size.

I prefer to bake on an airbake cookie sheet with parchment paper.  They cook evenly and the parchment paper is another no-mess trick.

What do you do when you only have enough batter for one cookie but no room on your last cookie sheet?  You eat it.  It’s all about the sacrifices, my friends.  I sacrificed my waist line.

Did you know that when you leave items in the hot pan/sheet they continue cooking?  If you don’t want your cookies to burn you only want to leave them on the pan for a minute or two until they are safe to move to a wire rack.  You’ll notice they continue to get golden after coming out of the oven so don’t want until they reach optimal golden color in the oven or they will over cook.

Sometimes when you’re a little too anxious to remove the cookies from the pan this happens.  Another sacrifice.  I’ll eat this one.  Have to make sure I didn’t poison them.

The best part of baking and cooking for me is when everyone enjoys them.  A compliment is the best thank you in my book.So I sent some to my brother and his roommate for extra compliments.

I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.  🙂

What is your favorite cookie?

Lots of cooking

Continuing the delayed holiday theme…

This December I cooked a lot.  A. Lot.  My Mom’s birthday is December 30th but we celebrated it early because my parents orphaned my brother and I and went away for Christmas/ her birthday.  So for about 4 days straight I cooked pretty much nonstop.  I’m a little anal and I made schedules of everything that needed to get done.  I even went so far as to make my brother a schedule and to add times to my own schedule.  Here is a quick rundown of what I did.

 

My daily schedule and a quick list of things I asked my brother to do.

 

 

 

 

My time schedule for Christmas Eve.

For my Mom’s birthday she and I looked on Pinterest (I recently introduced her to Pinterest and she’s been working hard to master it!) for some ideas.  She had just gotten the terrible cold that was going around and wasn’t feeling too great so she decided she wanted a soup.  We decided on this Garlicky Kale and White Bean Stew which turned out AMAZING.  I definitely recommend it to all you lovies.  Then we came across this Butternut Squash Stuffed Shells with a Lemon Sage Brown Butter Sauce.  Don’t let the long title scare you.  It actually wasn’t that difficult to make.  Especially if you have time to separate the steps so that you’re not doing everything all at once.  I had never worked with butternut squash so I had to look up how to peel and chop it and it was super simple.  And the shells?  Amazing.  Delicious.  So good.  The only problem we had was with the brown butter sauce.  It set our fire alarm off.  You don’t want to eliminate the sage and lemon flavors but my Mom suggested next time we make it to do a cream sauce instead of a butter sauce.  It would also help to keep the shells moist and the leftovers would be tastier.  Finally, I made little toasties.  I just cut up french bread, smeared a little butter, sprinkled some garlic salt, and topped with Parmesan and oregano.  Yumms.  And for dessert I made my family’s favorite: a Chocolate Roulade with homemade whip cream inside.  We love this dessert and it has become a specialty of mine.  I’ll have to post the recipe soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(it might not look pretty, but it sure is delicious)!!

Does your family cook the birthday person a special dinner?  What’s your family’s favorite dessert?

Yummtastic Before Bed Snack

I tend to be the opposite of most people… I don’t like bananas or shrimp, I’m neither a morning nor a night person, and I think orange juice and oranges are some of the grossest creations ever. So it’s no surprise to me that while most people can’t fall asleep on a full stomach, I can’t fall asleep on an empty stomach. My already overly active mind makes it incredibly difficult to fall asleep. Add in an empty stomach and my mind has something to focus on that provides hours of thoughts. “Man this is uncomfortable… there it goes, growling again… some toast would be lovely right now… when I lay on my stomach I can actually feel how empty it is… growl, growl, growl…”

I know it goes against weight loss theory to eat before going to bed but I just can’t help it! You’re also supposed to get at least 8 hours of sleep a night to help with weight loss. Well how am I supposed to do that if my stomach is empty?

What I can control is what I eat before bed. Before I started paying attention to what I put in my mouth, a typical before bed snack was a bowl of cereal. Obviously that is not the best choice (but sometimes the yummiest!). Now I try to choose something healthier. A bowl of fruit, a piece (only one!) of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and honey, and splitting my dinner in two so that I eat the second half about two hours before I go to bed have all been helping. My latest idea is something I can’t believe I didn’t think of before… a smoothie! I drink a smoothie every day for breakfast.

My typical smoothie, you ask? Why I’d be happy to share! My breakfast smoothie normally consists of LOTS of frozen fruit, water (I put enough water in to match the line where the fruit stops), about two big spoonful’s of plain Greek yogurt, and protein powder. Sometimes if I’m feeling my greens are low I’ll add a tiny bit of a total greed powder.

I didn’t want my night time smoothie to be so jam packed with protein but I did want to get a sense of fullness after eating so I did even more fruit than I normally would, milk, and a little bit of water. Blend and enjoy! It was a yummtastic before bed snack, left me feeling satisfied, and made me feel good that I just had a giant serving of fruit!

Yummmmm!

For more smoothie ideas, visit SmoothieGirlEatsToo!