peanut butter

Peanut Butter and Oreo Cookies

- Michael 4 Comments

What do you get when you take two great things and add them together? Well, mainly stuff like Kingdom Hearts (Final Fantasy combined with Disney? I’m sold!), or Machete (Danny Trejo plus graphic violence, plus bad acting, plus tits, plus f*cking with the wrong Mexican). But in this case, it’s to take two of my favourite baking ingredients, peanut butter and Oreos to make something that’s just that little bit excessive. One of these will leave you feeling like you don’t need your dinner but it’s 100% worth it.

 Oreo Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookie

I’d been meaning to put an Oreo inside a cookie for a long while now, ever since my friend Dan did it at the Wonder Years house show my friend Reece put on a few years back. But I just had to take it one step further and found a recipe here which obliged. Peanut butter. However if I were to do these again, I’d personally add that little bit more peanut butter so you get more of a kick.

Peanut Butter and Oreo Cookie

 

Peanut Butter and Oreo Cookies
 
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Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
Ingredients
  • 225g butter, softened
  • 110g packed brown sugar
  • 150g granulate white sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 65g peanut butter (I’d personally use a little more next time).
  • 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
  • 450g all-purpose white flour
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 100g ounces milk chocolate chips
  • 1-2 packs Oreo cookies
Instructions
  1. Cream together the butter and the sugars. Beating until light and fluffy.
  2. Add in the eggs, one at a time. Beating well after each addition.
  3. Beat in the vanilla extract and the peanut butter.
  4. In a separate bowl mix together the baking soda and the flour.
  5. Mix in the flour in several additions. The dough will be fairly dry but should form into a block. Mix in the chocolate chips.
  6. Set aside in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
  7. Pre-heat the oven to 170°C and line a baking tray with grease proof paper.
  8. Divide out the dough into balls. They should be large enough that when flattened they are slightly larger than an Oreo.
  9. Place an Oreo on top of one of these disks, place another disk on top and merge the sides together around the Oreo so it’s completely encased.
  10. Bake for 9-13 minutes, taking out while the cookie is still ever so slightly undercooked on the cop.
  11. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

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Peanut Butter and Bourbon Cookies

- Michael Leave a comment

What happens when you start baking and realise you’ve ran out of vanilla essence? Bourbon. Bourbon is what happens when you realise you’ve ran out of vanilla essence.  Or at least, it is in my house. I don’t mean drown your vanilla-less sorrows in a sea of bourbon, I’m not condoning becoming an alcoholic here, but the vanilla flavours present in bourbon make it perfect as a substitute in recipes where the alcohol has a chance to cook off. I was putting together some butterless and flourless cookies, i.e. I was baking simply because I had the urge to bake and hadn’t stocked up on some of the necessities, when the situation arose. I was following a recipe, which was first done by Averie Cooks, which it calls for fairly sizable amount of vanilla, meaning that a complete omission just wouldn’t be a good idea. Fortunately I had a bottle of cheap bourbon nearby and substituted the vanilla for a healthy glug of the hard stuff. Thus the Peanut Butter and Bourbon Cookies were born. The lack of butter and flour made them friendly to the vegan and gluten free friends.

peanutbutterbourbon

 

I’ve never had something requested to be made again so rabidly. I made them again just two days later and will undoubtedly make them again soon.

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Peanut Butter and Bourbon Cookies
 
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Ingredients
  • Ingredients:
  • 260g Smooth peanut butter (I have done this since with “crunchy” peanut butter but preferred the result of the cheaper smooth stuff that I used first time around partly as the cheaper peanut butter spreads less.)
  • 220g light brown sugar, packed
  • 2 Medium Eggs
  • 1 tsp Bourbon Whiskey (I used a cheap brand, no sense in wasting good whiskey and the cheaper brands tend to have more flavourings in them) OR 1tsp Vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 150g dark, or bittersweet chocolate, chopped roughly (larger chunks are encouraged)
Instructions
  1. Instructions:
  2. Start by creaming together the peanut butter and the sugar on a medium speed. Once they have encorporated, beat in the eggs. One at a time.
  3. Add in the glug of bourbon and beat until the mixture isn’t at all granular.
  4. Beat in the baking soda. Once this is incorporated beat in the chocolate chips. This won’t need much and you don’t want to blitz the chips themselves too much.
  5. Place in the fridge for between 2 and 24 hours. You want the dough nice and chilled.
  6. Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan) and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
  7. Form the dough into small balls and press them (gently, you don’t want these too flat) onto the baking tray a couple of inches apart
  8. Bake for around 8-10 minutes, until the edges have cooked but the center is still gooey.
  9. Allow to cool for a few minutes on the baking tray before transferring to a wire rack.

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Chocolate Chip Cookies with Peanut Buttercream Filling

- Michael 1 Comment

Peanut butter. It’s back. Yes, I think I have a problem. I’ve been trying to avoid using it for a bit, because so much of my stuff contained it. Then my friend Naomi happened across a facebook group full of recipes and spent an evening posting things on my wall along the lines of “OOOO MAKE THIS” followed by “ACTUALLY NO, THIS!”. The majority of them caught my eye, but I decided they’d be better for an occasion. I picked out something I could do that would be easy to share. Chocolate Chip Cookies with Peanut Buttercream filling. The key with these is to make sure that the cookies are that little bit chewy. It takes them from ordeal, to incredible.

Peanut butter filling

The other problem I had was that they didn’t spread as much as I’d expected. This meant that they ended up a bit tall and bulky. The later ones I baked for a minute or two less, and squashed them slightly with the back of a spoon to make them a little thinner.  Unfortunately I lost the original source for this piece, so I don’t know who to credit.

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Chocolate Chip Espresso Cookies with Peanut Buttercream Filling
 
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Ingredients
  • For the cookies
  • 130g flour
  • 88.5g cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 120g unsalted butter, softened
  • 134g granulated sugar
  • 55g firmly packed brown sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • 110g chocolate chips
  • 1 tsp instant espresso powder
  • For the filling
  • 256g Powdered sugar
  • 90g unsalted butter, softened
  • 113g Creamy peanut butter
  • (Possibly) 1-2tsp milk
Instructions
  1. Mix together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt) and set aside.
  2. In the bowl of your electric mixer, cream together the butter and the sugars until fluffy.
  3. Beat in the egg, then the vanilla. Add the espresso and beat until combined.
  4. On a slow speed, add the flour mixture in three stages, each time until it has just combined. After the last addition, add in the chocolate chips.
  5. Place the dough in the fridge and allow to chill for at least an hour, for it to firm.
  6. Once you feel it has chilled for long enough, remove from the fridge. Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan).
  7. Divide the dough into two equal sections. On a clean surface, form the dough into two equal rods. Rolling them out until they are around 12 inches in length. If they are shorter than this, don’t worry too much, you’ll just have larger cookies!
  8. Cut up the rods at intervals of about 1 inch.
  9. Place on greaseproof sheets in the center of the oven, around 1 inch apart.
  10. Bake for between 10-15 minutes. You want them to still be soft and chewy so it may be worth testing with one or two to begin with. I started baking them for around 13 and cut it down to 11 in the end. (As I said above, I pushed down some of them with the back of a spoon to make them spread better).
  11. Allow to cool partially before transferring to a wire rack.
  12. For the frosting. Starting on a slow speed, cream together the butter and the powdered sugar. Slowly increase the speed to medium and add the peanut butter. You may find that you need a small amount of milk to make it combine better.
  13. Spread on the top layer of a cookie, being fairly liberal with the amount, and then push down another cookie on top.

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Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

- Michael 2 Comments

Now, I am well aware that my first post was also Reese’s cookies. But I made these yesterday, and while they are fresh in my mind I just have to write about them. They are simply incredible. My friend Daryl showed me the recipe, which she found on Kitchen Magpie. Couple that with there being two of my colleague’s work birthdays today, one of which is an American woman who adores peanut butter, it was kind of a no-brainer. I’ve made “cookies” that contained peanut butter cups before, but they were sort of… squidged? Yeah, that’s the word, into the top of the cookies, which were slightly more cake-like. These actually contain the cup inside the centre of the cookie. It’s the perfect amount of indulgence. I always get such funny looks from the cashier whenever I turn up at the till with a basket full of nothing but Reese’s cups. These went down an absolute treat at work with one of my colleagues asking me to bake them, and only them, once a week for the rest of my time with the company.

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Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
 
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Ingredients
  • 290-300g All-purpose Flour
  • Dash salt
  • 1 tsp Baking Powder
  • 115g Unsalted Butter
  • 150g White Granulated Sugar
  • 165g Packed Brown Sugar
  • 1½ tsp Vanilla extract
  • 2 Eggs
  • 150g Chocolate Chips (I used milk chocolate)
  • 12-15 Reese’s peanut butter cups
Instructions
  1. First of all, preheat your oven to 180°C (or 160°C fan).
  2. Cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy.
  3. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Followed by Vanilla.
  4. Separately mix together the flour, salt and baking powder before mixing it in slowly on a low speed. (At this point I noticed that my cookie dough was a tad too sticky so I added a bit more flour until it firmed up a little.)
  5. Fold in the chocolate chips.
  6. Now comes the fun bit.
 

Take a good sized dollop of the dough in your hand, don’t make it too large as this is just the base of the cookie. Squidge (yup, there’s that word again) the peanut butter cup into the top of the dough, flattening it slightly.

 

Squidge
Squidge

Take a similarly sized piece of the dough and cover the top of the cup, pushing it down around the edges of the cup.

Encased cup

Spread them out on a baking tray, covered with a baking sheet. Space them slightly, but don’t worry too much as they don’t spread a large amount. Press them down slightly.

Baking tray

Bake for 12 minutes, remove from the oven. Allow to cool slightly before transferring to a cooling rack.

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Fresh Cookies
They are incredible while still fresh and slightly gooey.

Reese’s Pieces Chip Cookies

- Michael 1 Comment
Peanut Butter Cookies

Now, here, is where my love affair with peanut butter starts to rear it’s beautiful peanutty head. I have a bit of a soft spot for Reese’s Pieces and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Much of my baking has included them, and not just because of my own soft spot. I love baking for friends, and around 90% of them love peanut butter and American candy. This means that if I’m baking for a crowd, it’s a fairly good go-to thing. At the time, Reese’s Pieces were on offer at Sainsburys. Half price. I just couldn’t not stock up. My excuse of course was “well I can bake with them”. (Please excuse the lack of imagery with some of my earlier posts, I wasn’t in the habit of taking so many pictures back then).

Peanut Butter Cookies
Peanut butter infused glory.

Thus began my hunt for a Reese’s Pieces chip cookie recipe. I didn’t have to look far. Hershey’s obliged.

 

Reese's Pieces Chip Cookies
 
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Ingredients
  • 115g butter or margarine , softened
  • 100g granulated sugar
  • 110g packed light brown sugar
  • 170g Peanut Butter (I’m pretty penniless so for me it was own brand)
  • 1 egg
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 130g all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • A couple of bags of Reese’s Pieces
  • Dark Chocolate chips (optional)
Instructions
  1. First things first. Pre-heat your oven to 180ºC and line a baking tray with a baking sheet.
  2. Cream the sugars and the butter together until fluffy. Cream in the peanut butter. I used a wooden spoon and some elbow grease for this, but a food mixer would be absolutely fine.
  3. Add in the egg and mix until fluffy.
  4. Meanwhile (if using a mixer), sift the flour into a bowl with the baking soda and salt.
  5. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mix into the mixture. If mixing by hand, add in instalments. Do this until the mixture is well combined.
  6. Finally, add in the Reese’s Pieces (and the chocolate if you’re using it. I like to do this just so it adds an extra dimension to the cookies, stops it being out and out peanut butter).
  7. Using teaspoons, drop on to the baking sheets. I sometimes vary the size here, so I have a few larger cookies, instead of loads of little ones.
  8. For firmer cookies, bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges have browned slightly. If you’d prefer them to be a touch chewier, bake for around 9.
  9. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a few minutes until they are solid enough to transfer to a cooling rack.