Honey Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Surprise! I thought I wasn't going to be posting anything between my last post and my Daring Bakers post because I thought Father's Day was sooner than it actually is. I though I might have too many desserts in the house, so I wouldn't be baking anything else, but because it's not coming up for about another week, I decided to go ahead and make some cookies. The theme I was thinking for these cookies was honey nut. But I didn't actually want nuts in the cookies, and thought of peanut butter instead. And then I thought, why not add oatmeal too? By using Allrecipe's nifty little ingredient searcher, I came across this recipe that had a perfect 5-star rating. Although it didn't have that much oatmeal in it (which is why I left 'oatmeal' out of the title), it still sounded like a winner and with a 5-star rating and chocolate chunks added in, how could I refuse?

The cookie was excellent and oh, so chewy which is what I love so much about peanut butter cookies. They practically never lose their chewiness. The honey and oatmeal are just barely detectable and add a nice little twist to the cookies. For the chocolate chunks, I used the rest of a Ghirardelli's Intense Dark 72% bar that I had leftover from an unfortunately failed dessert. I was so upset about wasting 1 1/2 bars in a dessert that I messed up that I chopped the rest up and put it in these simple peanut butter cookies just to spite the dessert. Ha ha, I'm silly aren't I? But I digress... (More on the failed dessert in a later post.) The resulting cookie was extremely tasty with the chocolate, but of course, feel free to use whatever kind of chocolate you like. Maybe even some chopped up peanut butter cups in them? I'll definitely try it out sometime because this recipe is a keeper that I'll make again and again.


Honey Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies (from Allrecipes)
Makes about 2 dozen good-sized cookies

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup rolled oats
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup crunchy peanut butter (I used smooth)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, chopped

Directions

1. Mix together flour, oats, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat peanut butter, brown sugar, butter, honey, egg, and vanilla until well blended.
3. Stir dry ingredients into the peanut butter mixture in 2 additions. Stir in chopped chocolate.
4. Cover and refrigerate until the dough is firm and no longer sticky, about 30 minutes. (I refrigerated mine for several hours.)
5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter 2 heavy, large baking sheets. (I used parchment paper.) With hands, roll heaping tablespoons of dough for each cookie into a 1 3/4 quarter inch diameter ball. Arrange cookies on prepared baking sheets, spacing 2 1/2 inches apart. (I used probably more like 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie.)
6. Bake cookies until puffed, beginning to brown on top and still very soft to the touch, about 12 minutes. Cool cookies on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

The desire to try this recipe came from, of course, the classic peanut butter and chocolate combination, Reese's peanut butter cups. I actually hadn't had one in a long time until my dad bought a Valentine's box of mini Reese's on sale after Valentine's Day. While I like Reese's, I have this weird thing about peanut butter where I only eat it when I truly desire to eat it. I know that sounds totally weird and confusing, but it's kind of like this: for example, I could eat chocolate all the time. I adore it, and can eat it over and over without ever getting sick of it. But with peanut butter, if I eat too much of it in a short amount of time, I get tired of it and lose interest. So many of the minis disappeared without me eating a single one. It wasn't until there were only a couple left that I had one and suddenly realized how I had forgotten about how good they were. So I had to try the combo in cupcake form!

I planned to make them as chocolate cupcakes with a peanut butter frosting, and in particular, was eyeing this recipe of Ina's. But it had a couple of things in the recipe that I usually don't keep on hand and I also finally decided that I wanted a predominantly peanut butter taste than chocolate. I felt that if I made chocolate cupcakes, the chocolate flavor would be stronger than the peanut butter, and I really wanted the peanut butter to shine. So I found this recipe on Allrecipes. One thing that really stood out to me was that the recipe had cream of tartar in it. I've never in my life seen a cupcake recipe or any cake recipe besides Angel Food that had cream of tartar in it. I also read some of the reviews and decided to use oil in place of shortening. And my lord, the resulting cupcake was INCREDIBLY soft and fluffy! I honestly don't think I've ever made cupcakes as soft as these, and I have to think that it was the cream of tartar that did it. It definitely got me thinking about finding other recipes that used tartar in it or even coming up with my own that has it in the recipe. In the end, the cupcake was delicious and definitely great for the first peanut butter cupcake recipe I tried. I paired it with my old standby chocolate buttercream and it had a nice, Reese's flavor. I eventually would like to try the reverse, chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, but for now, these were great.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes (adapted from Allrecipes)
I halved the recipe twice and had enough batter for 7 cupcakes. A read a lot of reviews that said they were able to get about 30 cupcakes, so assume that this full recipe will make about 28-30.

Ingredients

• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• a pinch of salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners or grease and flour cups.
2. In a large bowl, mix together brown sugar, oil, and peanut butter and beat until thoroughly combined. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt in a medium bowl; stir into the batter alternately with the milk, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. Spoon into the prepared cups.
3. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until the top of the cupcakes spring back when light pressed (or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Don't be fooled by the cupcakes like I was. I thought 15 minutes was too little as almost all cupcakes take at least 18 minutes to bake. The tops to me still looked a little wet and so I didn't even test them at 15 minutes. 2 minutes later they were starting to brown, although still looking a little wet on top, but I checked them anyway. Sure enough, they were done, so don't be fooled!) Cool in the pan about 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Creamy Chocolate Frosting (from Allrecipes)
This recipe makes enough to thinly frost about 24 cupcakes, so if you're making the full cupcake recipe, you may want to times the recipe by 1.5.

Ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups confectioner's sugar
• 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 6 tablespoons butter (I always use salted. If you only have unsalted, add a good pinch of salt)
• 5 tablespoons evaporated milk (I always use regular 2% milk since I almost never have evaporated milk on hand. But if you have it, definitely use it)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, sift together confectioner's sugar and cocoa powder. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter until smooth, then gradually beat in sugar mixture alternately with the milk. Blend in vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy. If necessary, adjust consistency with more milk or sugar (or cocoa powder). Use to frost cupcakes.

By the way, I totally meant to pipe a different kind of pattern on these cupcakes since I all too often just go back to the classic swirl. But there's just something about the swirl that captivates me and so I just did it by instinct! I think what I'm getting tired of is the fact that I actually only have one star tip, a Wilton #32 open star that I've used for all of the cupcakes I've posted so far. (The only other tips I have are two petal tips, a leaf tip, and a very small round tip that I actually haven't even used yet...I find trying to make buttercream flowers intimidating!) I've been dying to get a 1M tip that seems to be the standard for the classic swirl but just haven't dragged myself up to Michael's to get it. But luckily, tomorrow I have to head up there anyway to get some stretcher strips for a new painting of mine, so as long as I remember, I'm definitely getting it then!