Peanut Butter and Jelly (or Nutella) Bars

I am aware that in some places peanut butter has become a class c controlled substance, I myself work in a "peanut aware" environment, however for those of you who can eat peanut butter with wild abandon, you should make these.  And probably share them, otherwise you may be staring at the pan and wondering how you managed to eat the vast majority of them in approximately 24 hours.  Some of you may know that I am possibly the most indecisive person ever, it took me weeks to decide on a new cell phone plan, Cheesecake Factory style menus are a nightmare because there are far too many options, and I can spend ages trying to pick a movie to watch on Netflix.  Needless to say, I couldn't decide what filling to sandwich between the two peanut butter cookie layers in these bars, so I made a big pan and filled half with raspberry jam and the other half with Nutella.  And now, I cant decide which I liked better, both are such delicious and classic combinations, so good luck deciding what to do if you make them.  I am full of helpful suggestions aren't I?  I tweaked this recipe ever so slightly, although if you wanted to, you could just use this technique and substitute your favorite peanut butter cookie dough recipe instead.      

It starts like a basic peanut butter cookie, grease (or line) the pan, let the eggs and butter come to room temperature and mix the dry ingredients together.

Then cream the butter, peanut butter and sugars together, add the eggs and vanilla and then mix in the dry stuff.

Split the dough in half and press half into the bottom of a 9x13 pan and put the second half in the freezer.

Spread your desired filling on the dough, I have half nutella and half seedless raspberry jam.  I didn't measure this, just eyeballed it, keep in mind that the cookie bit is pretty thick so you want a good filling to cookie ratio so that you can taste it through all the peanut butter.

Take the second half of the dough from the freezer and crumble it over the top.  I didn't use quite all the dough because it seemed like too much, once the fillings were completely covered I took the rest and made a bonus cookie.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes, the tallest bits of the crumble should be a nice golden brown.  Let cool before cutting.

Peanut Butter and Jelly (or Nutella) Bars from Sweet Pea's Kitchen

3 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups peanut butter

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 sticks butter, room temperature

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla extract

3/4 cup jelly (approximately)

3/4 cup nutella (approximately)

Preheat oven to 350 and either grease well or line a 9x13 pan.

Mix flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside.

Cream the peanut butter, brown sugar and butter until smooth, then mix in the eggs and vanilla.  Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Press half of the dough into the bottom of the pan and put the rest in the freezer.

Spread the jelly over half the pan and spread the nutella over the rest, or substitute whichever filling you so desire.

Cover the filling with the remaining dough, crumbling it into chunks about as large as marbles.

Bake for 30 minutes.  Cool before cutting.

Lemon Sugar Cookies

We have our traditional sugar cookies that we make every year for christmas, these aren't those cookies.  Those are cut out cookies, made using the same cookie cutters and frosted with buttercream and topped with sprinkles.  These are chewy, lemony and almost completely unadorned (I say almost because I couldn't help myself, I added some red sprinkles to the sugar I rolled them in to make them look a little festive).  O my are they tasty.  I am discovering that I am quite fond of lemon, I have absolutely no idea why it has taken this realization so long to dawn on me, but there you have it, lemony baked goods are my new loves.  I even remember the first time I admitted my love of lemon, my sister and I were trying to decide on which mini cupcakes to sample from this place and I selected the meyer lemony lemon and then I spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about how I could possibly recreate it.  The sweet and tart and bright deliciousness of baked goods that feature lemon can't be denied, and if you don't believe me, try these cookies.  I found the recipe here and didn't tweak it at all, except for the red sprinkles.

Start by mashing the lemon zest and sugar together.  It didn't turn a lovely pale yellow like the recipe said, but I'm sure something happened and mushing things about is generally not a bad time.

Then mix the dry stuff together.

Next, cream the butter and sugar, mix in the egg, then the flour, pretty standard cookie making stuff.  Also, please ignore how terrible the picture of the dough is, I don't know how it ended up so blurry but I made it smaller in hopes that it would be less noticeable, but I don't think that helped much.

Then you just scoop out about a tablespoon of dough at a time, roll it into a ball and roll it in the sugar.  Bake until the edges turn a bit golden, they are super soft and chewy when you take them out but get a bit crisper as they cool.

Molasses Cookies

I love the holiday season.  I start listening to Christmas music on the drive home from Thanksgiving dinner and don't stop until December 25.  I bake dozens of cookies, I mull wine, and drink hot spiced cider.  I watch Love Actually at least once in the month of December every year.  I like looking for that perfect present for everyone on my list.  Count me in for Christmas parties, driving around looking at lights and Christmas pageants, I love it all.  And so, I am kicking off my holiday baking today with these molasses cookies.  I love molasses cookies, my aunt makes the best (she always used to have a jar of molasses cookies for me and a jar of snickerdoodles for my sister every time we came to visit), unfortunately I seem to have lost her recipe somewhere along the way when I moved back east from Portland, so this recipe I found on Beach Home Companion will have to do for now.  Don't get me wrong, these molasses cookies are absolutely delicious (my dad had already eaten 3 by the time the last batch was out of the oven), but they are a thinner, crisper version instead of the thick, chewy ones I grew up with.  These thin ones though, the sugar caramelizes a bit on the edges and your first bite is a carmely, slightly spicy crunch which is pretty fabulous.  The recipe can be found here.      
 

Start by mixing the dry ingredients together.

Then mix the wet together.

Now, this is tricky, combine the wet and the dry.  Then you have to chill the dough until it hardens, which happens fairly quickly, I waited about an hour.

Once the dough is properly chilled, scoop out about a tablespoon at a time, roll each blob of dough into a ball and roll it in sugar.  Make sure you space the cookies out because they will spread.  The warmer the dough gets the harder it will be to work with, it will start sticking to your hands, so work quickly and put it back into the fridge after you fill up a tray so it can firm back up before you do the next one.

The recipe says to flatten the balls slightly with the bottom of a glass, which I did 2 out of 3 times, and it made no difference, so smush them a bit if you want, it is kind of fun, but you don't need to.

Bake for about 10 minutes, they will make your house smell quite nice, and enjoy.

Nina's Macaroons

My love of coconut goes back to the fifth grade. My teacher went on a vacation to Hawaii and brought back a coconut still in the husk, we spent all morning breaking into it and by recess we each had a chunk of fresh coconut to take out onto the playground with us. After that I would beg my dad to get coconuts at the grocery store, and if I was lucky, and they were on sale, sometimes he would give in and get me one. I also had a newfound appreciation for the macaroons that my grandmother made. This is her recipe, and the cookies are delicious, a bit golden and crispy on the outside and moist and chewy inside. It is also dead easy, there are only six ingredients, but unlike some things (such as the two ingredient cake, boxed cake mix and a can of pumpkin for example, which had the oddest texture) these cookies don't announce themselves as simple. Also, in case you haven't caught on by now, these are not the french macarons, with the meringue and the creamy filling but are rather the more american (or actually originally scottish if wikipedia is to be believed) coconutty ones. These are delicious as is, or you could dip them in chocolate, we had some icing from the smith island cake left over and dipped them in that and it was wonderful, although any chocolate ganache would do.

Cream one stick of oleo (or butter if that floats your boat, but I personally always use margarine because that is what the recipe calls for) with one cup of sugar and one egg.

Mix in the flour, coconut and almond extract.

Form the dough into balls, you may have to roll them between your palms a bit. I also like to make sure that there aren't too many long bits of shredded coconut sticking out, a few little bits turn golden, but long ones burn before the cookies are done.

Bake for 12 minutes at 350. If you want, dip them in chocolate once cool.

Nina's Macaroons

1 stick oleo (or butter)

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 cup flour

1 tsp. almond extract

3 cups shredded coconut, packed, unsweetened if you can find it, which I generally cant

Cream butter sugar and egg. Mix in the flour, almond extract and coconut. Form into walnut sized balls. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 12 minutes at 350.

Gingerbread Cookies

I hope everyone had a very merry christmas, I know I did. There was lots of cooking going on and seeing friends and family and drinking wine and playing in the snow. AND I got lots of food related presents (I just love kitchen gadgets....) which will be showing up here very soon as I can't wait to use them all! Anyways, back to the cooking, I have a fondness for gingerbread cookies. I am not sure where this fondness came from, my mom never made them at christmas, it has always been sugar cookies (which are amazing, by the way). Unfortunately, it can be difficult to find a good gingerbread recipe, one that doesn't resemble spicy cardboard. Fortunately, the second one I tried was good, at least in my opinion. The recipe can be found here, it is another one from the food network website. It is crucial to chill the dough for several hours, and even then you need to be sure to flour your surfaces pretty well to be able to roll it out properly. But don't let that put you off, once you get the hang of it, it isn't that tricky. Also, I would love to master royal icing, but I haven't gotten around to that yet. Instead I like to put a little glaze on these, a mix of powdered sugar, milk and a sprinkle of all the spices that are in the cookies themselves.

Sift together the flour and spices. Set it aside while you get on with blending the rest of the ingredients.

Mix together basically everything else, the butter, shortening, sugar, eggs and molasses.

Slowly add the flour mixture to make a fairly stiff dough.

Divide it in 2 and wrap each half up in plastic wrap. Stick them in the fridge for 3 hours or up to 2 days. I have always left it at least overnight, so I cannot vouch for what happens after 3 hours, but after a day the dough gets firmer and changes color slightly as the flavors develop.

2 days later, during the 'blizzard of 2009' while the weather outside is frightful.....

.... gingerbread is so delightful. Roll out the dough and cut out the cookies, popping the dough back into the fridge between batches so it doesn't warm up too much. Bake them on a parchment or silpat lined baking sheet, I bake them for 11 minutes and they turn out perfectly.

On a slightly related note, I got these woodland creatures cookie cutters from Ikea, and I love them, but I cannot figure out why there is a whale in with a moose, fox, hedgehog, squirrel, and bear. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Once the cookies are done and cooled, you can frost them as you wish. I like making a kind of thick glaze with powdered sugar and milk, with a bit of cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg thrown in that I smear of the cookies with the back of a spoon. Let the glaze dry before storing the cookies, or else they will all stick together in a massive glob of sugar and cookies, which may be tasty but probably not very pretty.

Triple Chocolate Cookies

I brought these cookies when I went to my very first Redskins game. It was a lot of fun, except for the fact that we lost to the Saints, but at least the cookies were good. I basically followed the recipe on the back of the bag of white chocolate chips with a few minor tweaks. White chocolate chips are fine, but they are even better when you mix in semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips. And a generous handful of dried cranberries cuts the sweetness a bit with a nice little tartness. The process is the same you would use for regular chocolate chip cookies, but these have a bit more pizzaz.

Start with butter, beat it with the sugar and vanilla.

Add the eggs, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and flour to make a lovely chocolate dough.

Next, add the chocolate chips. You want a bit over 2 cups total and can adjust the proportions according to your taste. I used slightly fewer white chocolate chips than semi-sweet ones. These cookies are delicious with dark chocolate chips added into the mix too.

Stir in the chips and about 1/2 cup of dried cranberries. Drop by spoonful onto cookie sheets.

Bake for about 10 minutes or until done. Be sure to snag one when they are nice and warm and the chocolate chips are still melted, so yummy.

Triple Chocolate Cookies (adapted from Nestle white chocolate chip cookie recipe)

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

2/3 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2 cups chocolate chips (white and semi-sweet and/or dark)

1/2 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350

Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl until creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, and flour, mix well. Stir in chocolate chips and cranberries. Drop by spoonful onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 9-11 minutes.