Good heavens it is bloody cold here in Cape Town. It was 8 degrees Celsius this morning and I could even see my breath in my bed!! Good heavens!! So, this weekend is Father's day and I've been baking up a storm.
What is great is I've learnt some hacks and I have a whole bunch of cupcake bases in the freezer, and once you take them out, they taste absolutely divine! t's good to know I can bake and freeze and actually have things ready on demand without having to do things from scratch.
BUT, I do need to spice things up and bake something new every now and again! I wanted to bake something that has a good shelf life and I was bored of baking regular vanilla biscuits.
My mom used to make such lovely peanut butter cookies and good heavens do I love chocolate, so I decided to search the internet for chocolate and peanut biscuits (since I still have quite a lot of assorted sprinkling nuts left that I bought in bulk).
Look, I was doing this at 4am which is nuts. No wonder I wasn't firing on all cylinders!
Peanut Butter Chip Chocolate Cookies
I came across this recipe, which I tried to make but ended up fudging up the cocoa measurements, so instead of two thirds of a cup of cocoa, I added 1 and a half cups, which meant I had to add a bit more butter and baking powder to balance the extra, unintended dry ingredient.
I also added 2 tablespoons each of honey and golden syrup to counteract the bitterness of the extra cocoa. I don't know why I did this... I could have used ordinary sugar, but good heavens did those flavours come through beautifully in the end product.
The dough was …strange. It wasn't what I was expecting and was not the type you knead and roll out and use cookie cutters. One needs to drop spoonful's of it onto baking paper and hope for the best.
I think, in hindsight now, I will ust fill a large baking tray with the batter and cut it into squares while it's still hot and soft. Much like chocolate brownies. I also intend to add chocolate chips and even drizzle the whole lot with chocolate! There is no such thing as too much chocolate 🤣🤣🤣🤣
So, before I forget how to do it, let's get this recipe down so I can repeat my booboo that turned into the most delicious brownie/ cookies ever!
I accidentally made freaking MAGIC and I am delighted to share it here with you so you can make some too!
So here we go:
**Tools: **
A large wooden spoon
An electric hand mixer
a butter knife
A fork
A teaspoon
2 or three table spoons
A measuring cup
LOTS of baking paper
Spray and cook (which also helps the baking paper to stay in place)
A large bowl for mixing
Several baking trays
This recipe yielded 48 cookies which is unbelievable since the original recipe said 24. And they were enormous!
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups white sugar
400g butter
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I don't really measure this, I just pour till it feels right 😜)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 and a half cups unsweetened cocoa powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
1 and a half teaspoons of baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 x tablespoons of honey
2 x tablespoon of Syrup (golden or maple or what ever you have in your pantry)
2 cups peanut butter chips
Method:
Add all the wet ingredients: the butter, eggs, vanilla extract, honey, syrup and sugar and mix with the hand mixer on high until the mixture is creamy.
Then add all your dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cocoa, and nuts and blend together with the hand mixer.
Spoon generous blobs of batter onto the baking paper. You can try to shape them into "rounds" using your fingers.
Keep the blobs spaced well apart as they will expand and rise in the baking process.
Bake for 15 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.
They will feel very soft when they come out of the oven. put each tray onto a heatproof surface to fool before trying to remove each cookie from the baking paper as they need time to cool and harden on the outside. If you try to move them too much at this stage they will just fall apart if you try to move them while they are hot.
Once cooled, they will be surprisingly soft in the middle while the outside will be crunchy. The combination is droolicicous!!!
We ate all 48 of them in about three days. They are extremely addictive! You have been warned!!! 😜❤️🍫🍪
