Cookie Extravaganza! Triple Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe

Do you know what goes with peanut butter?

If you said 'jelly', you are wrong.

If you said 'pigs', you are close. And you get bonus points.

But the correct answer is MORE PEANUT BUTTER!!!!

The way to make standard peanut butter cookies more delicious is really quite simple.  Go to the store and buy everything that says 'Reeses' in the baking aisle.  Now put them all into the cookies.  

These are triple peanut butter cookies, but maybe you could make them into quadruple or quintuple peanut butter cookies if you can find even more things.  That would be amazing.

Cal, however, disagrees.  He doesn't like peanut butter cookies.  

Yeah, I don't understand either.

To make these cookies, we started with a basic peanut butter cookie recipe from our Good Housekeeping Cookbook.

Ingredients 

• 1 1/4 c flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 c. natural creamy peanut butter
• 1/2 c butter
• 1/2 c packed brown sugar
• 1/4 c sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract 
• 1 c peanut butter chips
• 1 c Reese's pieces 

Cornelius' tip: don't use the reduced fat stuff! or "peanut butter product" you really need  the good stuff

instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line your cookie sheets with parchment.


2. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl.


3. In the electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars.  When its light and fluffy, add the peanut butter.  Add egg and vanilla.  Beat until combined. 


4. Add flour mixture and make sure it's all mixed up and blended.


5. Now put all of those glorious peanut butter bits and in and mix it by hand.  You can use the electric mixer if you want but you'll probably smash up the pieces.


6. Drop heaping tablespoons of the dough, 2" apart, on the sheets.  With fork, press criss-cross pattern into cookies. Cornelius' question: why do we do this part?  is there a real baking reason why peanut butter cookies are criss-crossed or is it just expected at this point?


7. Bake until lightly browned, 15-20 min. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Yield: 3 dozen cookies, maybe more

Eat with plenty of milk! 

pig, out.

Penguin Sugar Cookies Recipe

As you may be aware, pigs and penguins are close allies.  

We are both highly stealthy and have many secret skills which we cannot tell you about. 


There is however one skill we can safely tell you about - that is our cookie baking prowess.


As part of the cookie extravaganza (still running since last December), we invited our penguin friend Skipper to help us with the sugar cookies.  

As you will see, Skipper did very little work.  Other than posing with the cookies.  He was very good at that.  I was in charge of all the decorating.  Cal helped some.

Once upon a time there was... Dipped Shortbread Cookies

I know these cookies seem a little untimely now that it's April... they made a lot more sense when we made them back in December.  


Despite the holiday sprinkles, this basic dipped shortbread recipe is good all year.  It's actually a very nice, light spring cookie!  


Maybe you'll want to find some sprinkles with bunnies or something on them instead, though.  Of course, if you have red and green sprinkles leftover still, we wouldn't hold it against you if you wanted Christmas cookies in the springtime - they would still be delicious.

Once upon a time there was.. French Butter Cookies

So.

We could make up some reasons we haven't been sharing our cute faces lately... like bluepigface disease or the whooping oink syndrome.... or we could pretend like our absence didn't happen and we have been blogging all of 2011.

We're going to go with the second choice.

Today, we present the fourth installment of our cookie extravaganza! French butter cookies.

For some reason, it never occurs to me that certain foods can be homemade.  Like circus peanuts.  

I only eat these wonderful cookies once a year, at Christmas time.  They come in a round tin and that is just how it is.  

So when I saw their recipe on Annie's Eats, my first reaction was confusion - it had really never occurred to me they could be made in a kitchen.  My second reaction, was, of course, I NEED TO MAKE THESE AND EAT THEM NOW.

If you are having the same train of thought, I recommend going with the second option.