I can’t tell you why exactly (not because I’m being coy, but just because I am clueless myself), but I have been craving peanut butter like crazy lately. Do I need more nuttiness in my life? Whatever the reason, it’s a bit of a problem. Peanut butter is one of the things I don’t usually keep in the house because when it’s there I will find any opportunity to swing by fridge, pry off the lid, and drag a spoon through the creamy stuff to lick like a lollipop.
The funny thing is, peanut butter is not even something I’m wild about. My current state of uncontrollable love for it is just a freak occurrence that happens every once in a while where I inexplicably flip for the stuff. It’s like the rare night when, a few times a year, I cannot sleep and instead pretend that I am a terribly deep poetess insomniac, pacing the wooden floors in a long nightgown and thinking grand thoughts.
In any event, you can only eat so many spoonfuls of peanut butter before you want to do something more substantive with the stuff. Enter these cookies. I’d been eyeing them for a while over at Deb’s place, and when I found myself in happy possession of a quiet, lazy Sunday afternoon, I knew just what to do.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes about 3 dozen
adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s adaptation of The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook (it’s like the geneaology of a cookie!)
I learned a really important life lesson in the course of this recipe: brown sugar as hard as a murder weapon is not beyond repair. If you microwave about a cup at a time for 20-30 seconds, it becomes soft and you can break apart the granules with your fingers. Then store in a ziploc bag in the freezer, and you are officially a domestic goddess not to be messed with.
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup natural creamy peanut butter at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 tablespoon milk
3/4 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, then set aside.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and the peanut butter together until fluffy. Next, plop in both sugars and beat until smooth. Crack in the egg and mix well. Stir in the milk. Now fetch the dry ingredients and mix in completely with the peanut butter mixture. Stir in the peanut butter chips.
Scoop up rounded teaspoons and roll between your palms into balls before placing on an ungreased cookie sheet. Gently press each cookie with the back of of a fork before popping in the oven to bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool slightly, then eat.
