Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

How appropriate it is that my first “What I’m Eating” post is about cookies.

I’ve had a long-standing love for cookies of all kinds. Homemade, store-bought, bakery-made. Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar. Trust me. If it’s a “cookie”, I’ll eat it.

While home sick from work and hit with a desperate craving for chocolate and/or cookies, I realized I had chocolate chips and had just bought Safeway Crunch Peanut Butter (Tangent- hydrogenated vegetable oil, I know. I’m a hypocrite when it comes to Peanut Butter. I just can’t bring myself to love natural peanut butter!). A quick search through my Google Reader archives led me to a peanut butter cookie recipe on Eat Me, Delicious, based on the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook.

Despite my obsession with following directions meticulously, I improvised a little given the absence of milk and vanilla extract. It kills me to not follow the directions but that shows you how badly I must have wanted these cookies.

Here’s what I made:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, microwaved for 20 seconds
1 cup crunchy peanut butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar (who can really tell the difference between dark and light anyway?)
1 large egg, at room temperature (mine wasn’t at room temperature. oh well. I didn’t plan to get sick, stay home, and have a killer craving for cookies.)
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a medium-large bowl, combine the flour, the baking soda, the baking powder, and the salt with a fork or whisk. Set aside.

NOTE: I always, always use the wrong bowl for the wrong ingredients. I’ve made cookies enough times to know that the dry ingredients will eventually get poured into the wet ingredients (not vis versa) but I always use the bigger bowl for the dry ingredients. I guess I could just use two bowls of the same size… but… I don’t. Don’t make the same mistake! /NOTE.

In a different, largER bowl, beat the butter and the peanut butter together until fluffy. I used an awesome hand mixer. You can get a decent one for $25 and make baking a cinch… and spare my arms from a probably much-needed workout. I can’t even find mine online because it’s so old and apparently unwanted. Figures.

Add the sugars and beat until smooth. Add the egg and mix well.

Add the flour mixture little by little and beat thoroughly. Stir in the chocolate  chips. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto baking mat (on an ungreased cookie sheet), leaving several inches between for expansion. I didn’t do this very prettily. I just used spoons to grab chunks of dough and plopped them onto the sheet. It works.

The recipe says to bake for 10-12 minutes, but by 10 minutes my first batch was overbaked. I baked the second for 9 minutes, and will take the last batch out at 8. I like my cookies not too baked.

Cool the cookies on the sheets for 1 minute, then remove to a rack to cool completely.

For me, I got exactly 3 dozen cookies out of it.

Yum. I’ve already had 3…