Cookie Extravaganza! Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies

You didn't really think our cookie extravaganza was only two kinds of cookies did you?  After I posted that picture of us sitting on top of a giant mountain of ingredients but then only followed up with two blog posts, did you wonder if we just posed like that for fun? And to tease you with the possibility of cookies?  Well fear not, castle farm cookbook blog readers, we have more cookies up our sleeves (if we had sleeves there would ALWAYS be cookies in them). 

We found this recipe in Taste of Home Best Loved Cookies magazine.  They are a peanut butter cookie with a surprise inside as you might have guessed by the name "peanut butter surprise cookies".  Although we like to keep surprises secret, it would be difficult to tell you how to bake these without telling you the surprise.  We would have to come up with some sort of elaborate plan where you tell us you are baking them and we sneak to your kitchen and add in the surprise ourselves.  

But since we are but two small farm animals, it seems much easier to just give away the surprise.  As long as you promise not to tell other people before they eat it.  Then, wait for them to take a bite, and yell "surprise!".  

So, do you promise to do this?

Chicken Piccata Recipe from the Castle Farm Cookbook

Oh, chicken piccata, how I love you. Before there was the castle farm cookbook, or even the castle farm, there was just a cow and a pig learning to cook. And one of the first things we learned to make was this delicious chicken piccata.

If you've never had chicken piccata before, you should know that chicken piccata is what cows dreams are made of (along with grass, grassy hills, grazing on grassy hills, mooing, and cute pigs).

Luckily, it's quite simple to make.

ingredients 

• 2 4-oz flat chicken breast peices
• some flour
• some salt, lemon pepper, and lemon peel
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/3 c. lemon juice
• 1/3 c. white wine
• pasta

* this gives us enough sauce to dip baguette in the leftover. If you want to make more or less of this easy recipe, just keep the proportion of lemon juice/wine even.

instructions

1. Put some flour in a shallow dish, sprinkle with seasonings. we never measure and are pretty liberal with the seasonings.
2. Dip chickens in the flour.
3. Melt butter in a skillet. cook chicken over medium-low heat until no longer pink.  See how pretty it is now?
4. Remove chicken from the skillet. add wine and lemon juice. stir, scraping up the bits, and bring to a simmer. let it simmer a minute or two.
5. Serve, by pouring sauce over chicken and pasta. garnish with parsley.

Yields: 2 servings

Perhaps now you can see this is why I dream about chicken piccata. It's really beautiful, isn't it?

Moo!