Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

More birthday treats! And nothing says delicious to me more than chocolate and peanut butter. I think that I am at least 15% peanut butter. Seriously, if you present me with anything containing chocolate and peanut butter it will be gone in moments. NOM! At all times I have a supply of Reese’s mini peanut butter cups in my freezer. If there is no peanut butter in the house it is a national emergency. And yes, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a good dinner.

That means that no cookie is better than a peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie. That perfect combination of salty and sweet. I’m even known to sprinkle a little salt on top of my peanut butter cookies (I’ve been known to sprinkle salt on everything, so I guess this isn’t a stretch). With a busy week ahead of me, I decided to take fifteen minutes tonight to make myself some cookies. Plus it’s my birthday week, so it’s all good.

Peanut Butter Pancakes

I am a pancake connoisseur. It’s true, I have a badge to prove it (just don’t ask to see it!) Like some people are expert wine sommeliers, or perhaps they are professional perfume makers, I am a specialist when it comes to pancakes. Let’s not get confused, I’m not saying that I make the world’s best pancakes. No. What I’m saying is, I’m really good at eating pancakes.

I can say that I’ve had a fair number of pancakes in my life. I’m a big fan of the harvest pancakes at IHOP, and that the pancakes from the Pancake Café in Madison are amazing. An oven-baked apple pancake is the perfect breakfast to share with someone else and oatmeal pancakes are super filling. The type of pancake that I’ve yet to have an amazing one is the peanut butter pancake.

I’ve gone on a search to find a good peanut butter pancake. It is very hard to get this flavor just right. I’ve had all kinds, from the taste-less to the over-powering. The sad flat peanut butter pancake, riddled with too much fat and the worst, a regular pancake with peanut butter chips, ugh. I thought it was hopeless, so I started experimenting on my own.

I discovered one very important thing, using real peanut butter makes the pancakes too heavy. This is perhaps why the Pancake House in Amherst went with peanut butter chips. But how do you get peanut butter without all the fat? The answer is PB2. Made by Bell Plantation, PB2 is made by pressing peanuts to remove all the oil, and grinding them into a powder. I love it in shakes and decided this was just what I needed to make my own delicious pancakes.

Sure enough, PB2 came through. I was rewarded with peanutty, fluffy, tasty pancakes. Adapting my tried and true pancake recipe to accommodate the additional dry ingredients was easy and resulted in something I am happy to share with you. If you don’t have PB2 (it’s sold in specialty stores and online) you can use regular peanut butter (I’m talking Jif, not fancy natural PB), just cut down on the butter/oil you use. Serve it up with some of that blackberry jam that you made last week (thin it out with a little water on the stovetop) and enjoy. Mmmm, PB&J for breakfast.

Chocolate buttercream & Peanut butter cream cheese frosting

Making frosting is a very messy process, especially when you are the proud owner of a possessed hand mixer. The settings on the mixer range from 1-6. Now one would assume that 1 would be a nice slow speed and 6 being cement mixer speed. My hand mixer has a system all to itself, most likely due to the fact that it is possessed by some angry baking spirit.




Setting 1 – Whoa! Your flour just went all over the counter!
Setting 2 – Seriously, you wanted your ingredients to stay in the bowl?
Setting 3 – Similar to setting 2, but with a nice burning smell
Setting 4 – Considerable burning smell, insane mixing velocity
Setting 5 – Off
Setting 6 – Still Off

It would seem that my mixer tires itself out by setting 4, and decides it’s not going to try anymore after that. By then you haven’t got any ingredients left in your bowl, so why would you need a fifth or sixth setting. However, after considerable fighting with the hand mixer, delicious frosting was the result. Enjoy my hard won battle and go make yourself some frosting for those cupcakes you made the other day.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
Adapted from Elinor Klivanis – Cupcakes!

1.5 ounces unsweetened chocolate (chopped)
1 ½ sticks butter (room temperature)
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla
¼ cup heavy cream

. Melt chocolate (I like to use the microwave at half power), set aside to cool slightly
. Mix together powdered sugar and cocoa powder
. Mix in butter until smooth (about 2 minutes using possessed hand mixer)

. Add Chocolate and mix until evenly colored
. Add vanilla and heavy cream, mix until light and fluffy and frosting has lightened in color

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

2 ounces cream cheese
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 ½ cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
¼ cup heavy cream

. Mix together cream cheese and peanut butter
. Add in powdered sugar and mix until smooth
. Add vanilla
. Slowly add heavy cream 1 tbsp at a time until desired consistency is achieved.

(This is a smoother frosting than the chocolate buttercream. I piped a chocolate buttercream retaining wall on the top of my cupcakes, then filled them in with peanut butter frosting.)