Flour Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies

yes, i'm still alive! law school does tend to eat one's soul... er, i mean, time. i have managed to bake a few things in the past few months, but not to blog about them. so here's to catching up!


i made these flour-free peanut butter cookies, a variation on another recipe i'd tried before. the old recipe was just 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar, 1 egg. bake for 8 minutes at 350 degrees. that's it. super easy, and pretty tasty too.

this time, i tried one that looked more like a regular cookie recipe, from allrecipes.com:

• 2 cups peanut butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

mix, drop onto cookie sheet, bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. still super easy.

these are good for those who want to cut out wheat products, but they're still not quite the same. the sugar doesn't dissolve very well in the peanut butter or something, and i don't think the baking soda adds any lift to these, so i'd just as soon leave it out.


but, as you can see, these cookies were not left alone. what can make mediocre cookies delicious? chocolate ganache! i am a huge fan of ganache.

• i think this was one part cream to one part semi-sweet chocolate chips.
  
• heat the cream slowly, i prefer on low power in the microwave in a pyrex measuring cup.
  
• then pour over the chocolate and stir. ta-da! ganache!

New Cookbook!

i just got the best bake sale ever cookbook at half price books! it has a ton of cookie recipes, but also has recipes for (according to the chapter headings) bars and brownies, breads and coffee cakes, cupcakes, rolls, and muffins, cakes, pies, and more. it even has tips on how to organize and run a successful bake sale.


i just flipped through the first few cookie recipes, and i wanted to make every single one of them. i can't wait to get crackin'!

(Dark) Chocolate Cookies

i made this recipe from one of my favorite blogs, living locurto (she's from texas, how can i not love her?). the recipe is on her site (that's right, i'm making you go to her site for it- don't be lazy, now).

basically, it's a dark chocolate cake mix with butter, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, chocolate chips, and nuts. for my version, i used devil's food cake mix because i couldn't find dark chocolate cake mix. it turned out well with the devil's food, although i did later find the dark chocolate mix at target, so i might have to try them again with the dark chocolate mix this time. and i put in semi-sweet chocolate chips, as directed, and used pecans for my nuts.

man, were they good! i was afraid that they would be a little cake-y, being from a cake mix and all, but they were nice and chewy, just like i like 'em. and, the original recipe calls for cream cheese, but i didn't use any and they were still delicious. the only thing i'd do differently next time, other than maybe use a dark chocolate cake mix, is add more nuts. the cookies were quite chocolate-y, and having more nuts would have balanced it out quite nicely.

now, these got all scarfed up before i could take a picture, so i'm posting a picture from living locurto's site. mine were a little flatter than hers, but essentially the same.

overall assessment: great recipe- easy with phenomenal results!

Clean-Out-The-Cupboard Cookies II

i had such great success with the first clean-out-the-cupboard cookies that i decided to try to clean out my cupboards some more by making some more cookies. so i made peanut butter oatmeal cookies... which sound like they might be pretty good. well, let's just say they weren't my best work. they were certainly edible, and were pretty good for breakfast (c'mon, they've got oatmeal, and peanut butter for protein! right?), and were ok if you just really needed some cookies, but they just weren't that good.

here's my recipe, based loosely on this one. this original oatmeal cookie recipe is really, really good... but not so much with the peanut butter.

1/2 c. shortening
1/2 c. peanut butter (crunchy)
2 c. dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 c. uncooked oatmeal
-cream fats and sugar, mix in rest of wet ingredients. in separate bowl, mix dry ingredients except oatmeal, and add to wet ingredients in about 3 installments (so it doesn't splatter everywhere). then, mix in oatmeal. roll into balls, press slightly and bake about 8 minutes at 350 degrees.

no pictures this time. the cookies weren't worth it.

Clean-Out-The-Cupboard Cookies

so, as i was getting to move into my apartment, i was trying to eat all of my food. i didn't want to move it all, but i also was leaving in may for the summer so wouldn't be able to eat it. so, i made some cookies with whatever i had on hand! the recipe was based on a classic, but of course it was different because i was using whatever i had in my cupboard.

Clean-Out-The-Cupboard Cookies
1/2 c. shortening
1/2 c. butter
1 1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
2 1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 c. white chocolate chips
1/2 c. chopped pecans
-cream butter and sugar, add rest of wet ingredients. in separate bowl, mix dry ingredients then add to wet in about three installments. roll into balls, drop onto cookie sheet, bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

these were really good! the brown sugar made it chewy, and the white chocolate chips gave them that extra little sweetness. and the nuts... oh, the nuts... pecans make everything better. i would have preferred more chocolate and nuts in the cookies, but that's all i had in my cupboard (sort of the point of these cookies).

a tip from experience: don't bake the refrigerated dough- let it come to room temperature first. otherwise, it doesn't bake all the way and burns on the bottom... oops.

Irish Cream Sugar Cookies

so, i made the homemade irish cream for the party. but i still had some extra ingredients (like the half-and-half) that i didn't have anything else to do with, so i made some more irish cream, this time with the instant coffee instead of brewed coffee. i recommend the brewed coffee, because the granules didn't really dissolve. anywho, nearing the end of the semester i still had a bunch of the irish cream left over and didn't have anything to do with it... so i made cookies with it! here's the original recipe, but here are my edits:

1 c. butter

1 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. white sugar

1 egg yolk

1 egg

1 c. irish cream

4 c. all purpose flour (i used about half whole wheat and half unbleached white)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

-cream butter and sugars, add dry ingredients. refrigerate, then roll into balls. then, and here comes the fancy part, roll in sugar and put on the cookie sheet. then make indentions in the balls (i used the back of my teaspoon measuring spoon) and put a few drops of irish cream in the divet. just a little- if you put too much, it'll spill and burn on your cookie sheet!

i tried to find a way to make them sweeter and more irish-cream-y. i rolled them in white sugar, i rolled them in brown sugar, i rolled them in irish cream and then in sugar, i topped them with brown sugar. the brown sugar and the irish cream caramelized and burned in like 6 minutes. good thing i had put foil on my pan first!

anywho, i decided rolling them in sugar and putting the little bit of extra cream on it makes the cookies sweeter and a little more irish-cream-ier. still, they're not that sweet and not that irish-cream-y. but they were pretty good, and good enough to give away to my professors at the end of the semester. but i probably won't make them again. too much work for too little payoff, since they didn't taste much like irish cream.

and, here's pictures!