Peanut Butter Chocolate Thumbprints

I heart chocolate.

I heart peanut butter.

I know, I know, we all know this by now.

Lucky for me, my favorite holiday treat combines these two loves – Peanut Butter Blossoms.  You know the ones.  The crumbly, peanut buttery cookie with the sweet sugar coating and slightly melted chocolate kiss pressed right into the top.  YUM.  They’re on my Grandma’s cookie platter every holiday season and are always the ones I grab the second I walk in her door Christmas day. After giving her a big hug of course!

Fun fact – Peanut Butter Blossoms were the Pillsbury Bake-Off winner in 1957.  Hoo hoo!

Here’s my adapted recipe:

1/4 cup non-hydrogenated shortening

1/2 cup natural peanut butter

1/3 cup turbinado sugar

1 egg

1 tablespoon skim milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup white whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup grain sweetened chocolate chips

2 tablespoons natural peanut butter

Preheat the oven to 375*F.  In a large bowl, beat together shortening and 1/2 cup peanut butter until well blended.  Add turbinado sugar and beat until fluffy.  Beat in egg, milk and vanilla extract.  In a separate bowl, mix together white whole wheat flour, baking soda and salt.  Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and blend until combined. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on cookie sheet.  Using your thumb, make an indentation in the center of each dough ball.  Bake for about 8 minutes.  Note: You may need to press the indent in again when the cookies come out of the oven.  Mine stubbornly popped up a bit in there!  While the cookies are cooling, melt together chocolate chips and 2 tablespoons peanut butter.  Fill cookie indents with melty goodness.  Makes 20 cookies.

They’re so cute!  Like little buttons.

These cookies are so soft!  And the chocolate-peanut butter filling is sort of truffly in texture once it cools.  It wasn’t all that peanut buttery though.  I think next time I’ll up the peanut butter to chip ratio or just melt the chocolate chips themselves to make the filling.

Do you have a favorite memory of Peanut Butter Blossom cookies?  

Crystallized Ginger Cookies

Christmas tiiiime is heeeeeere.

A little Charlie Brown Christmas anyone?  I totally grew up on that movie.  My parents still have the VHS – yup, you heard me, VHS – in their film collection.  And my mom gets super excited when it’s on TV each year.  It’s like network television’s sign that Christmas has arrived.  And we all know that network television is the calendar of the modern age.

Anyway, I LOVE Christmas and was really excited to start getting some Christmas baking business up on the blog.  Since Andrea over at bella eats [and runs] chose ginger as this week’s BSI, what better way to welcome the holiday cheer than to spice up a traditional Christmas ginger cookie!  I adapted this recipe and doubled the ginger fun by adding crystallized ginger to the mix.  And there you have it!  Crystallized Ginger Cookies.

Here’s the recipe:

1/2 cup turbinado sugar

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons skim milk

2 tablespoons molasses

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1/2 cup crystallized ginger, chopped*

* I used crystallized ginger that was made with raw unrefined sugar.

Preheat the oven to 350*F.  In a large bowl, cream together sugar and oil.  Add skim milk, molasses and vanilla and blend.  In a separate bowl, mix together whole wheat pastry flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and cloves.  Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and blend.  Stir in crystallized ginger.  Dough will be sticky, so you can refrigerate for 15 minutes or so to make it easier to work with.  Roll heaping tablespoons into balls, flatten to about 1/3 of an inch and place on cookie sheet.  Bake for 8-10 minutes.  Let stand two minutes and remove to cool.  Makes 14 cookies.

These cookies are super soft and super SPICY.  The crystallized ginger really gives them an extra kick!  If you’re a ginger fan, you’d love them.  I do think next time I’ll throw an egg into the batter though – I’d like a little more crispy action around the edges!

Do you have a fun ginger cookie recipe?

Crumbly Peanut Butter Oat Bars

I let you all in on my deep love for chocolate right from the get go, so it’s only fair that I now share my second, though by no means less significant, obsession.

Peanut butter.

Ohh…peanut butter.  I eat it everyday.  At least twice a day.  I smear it on apples, bananas and celery.  I drizzle it over yogurt and my morning bowl of oats.  I spread it on slices of toasty bread and freshly made pancakes.  I eat it straight up from the jar.  You may think I’d tire of the nutty treat, but no.  You may ask, why don’t I give other nut butters a chance?  Switch it up a bit!  Oh, believe you me, I’ve tried branching out – almond butter, cashew butter, etc.  But nothing beats the original PB.  I heart you PB.

Clearly, it was only a matter of time before peanut butter made an appearance on this blog.  It was just waiting for the right inspiration.  And then that inspiration came.  And so I made Crumbly Peanut Butter Oat Bars.

I love the combination of peanut butter and oats, so I was really excited about making these bars.  Here’s the recipe:

1/2 cup natural peanut butter

1/3 cup honey

2/3 cup oats

2/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup turbinado sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons skim milk

Preheat the oven to 325*F. Spray an 8 x 8-inch pan with cooking spray and set aside. In a bowl, stir together peanut butter and honey.  In a separate bowl, mix together oats, whole wheat pastry flour, turbinado sugar, salt and baking powder.  Drizzle canola oil and milk over oat mixture.  Mix with a fork until evenly moistened and crumbly.  Set aside 1/2 cup for topping and press the remaining oat mixture into the prepared pan.  Spread peanut butter mixture over the top – I microwaved it first to make this easier.  Sprinkle reserved oat mixture over peanut butter mixture.  Bake for about 25 minutes.

OMG.  Peanut butter goodness!  The top of the bars are perfectly crumbly and the peanut butter middle is deliciously sweet and gooey and oozing with rich peanut butter flavor.  SO.  GOOD.

Since there are oats in there, I can eat these for breakfast, right?  Right?

Do you have a favorite peanut butter baked treat?

Maple Sweet Potato Cornbread

Fall is the BEST time for baking.  I seriously believe the season was made just to give us inspiration.  Think of all the flavors and spices – pumpkin, apple, cinnamon, nutmeg.  Ahh…I can smell an oven seeping with autumn aromas as I type.

I already made Spiced Pumpkin Honey Muffins to express my love for what I deem to be the epitome of fall – Thanksgiving.  But my love overfloweth, and I couldn’t let the holiday come and go without baking up another festive recipe.  So without further ado, I’d like to introduce Maple Sweet Potato Cornbread.

My Maple Banana Cornbread was such a hit around here that I thought it would be fun to up the fall aspect and transform it into a loaf bursting with seasonal tastes.  Since sweet potato is a favorite Thanksgiving – or anytime! – food of mine, the way to make this happen was obvious.  I substituted sweet potato for banana and the rest, my friends, is history.

Here’s my recipe:

1 cup stone ground cornmeal

3/4 cup white whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2  teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup mashed sweet potatoes

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 egg white

1/2 cup skim milk

Preheat the oven to 350*F. Spray an 8 x 4-inch loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside.  In a large bowl, mix together sweet potatoes, maple syrup, egg white and skim milk.  In a separate bowl, mix cornmeal, white whole wheat flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda.  Stir the dry ingredients into the sweet potato mixture until just blended. Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 40 minutes.

Maple!  Sweet potato!  Cornbread!  A trifecta of fall flavors!

This bread is quite tasty!  Very moist and the essence of sweet potato really comes through.  Compared to my Maple Banana Cornbread, I’d say the sweetness is more subtle – because sweet potato has less natural sugar than banana – and the nutty cornmeal flavor is a bit more subdued.  But it was still very well-received and Dan an official taste tester had a hard time picking which loaf he liked best. 

This would be a great treat to bring along to a holiday dinner.  Will you be baking anything for Thanksgiving this year?  

Maple Banana Cornbread

If you haven’t caught on yet, I like to bake traditional treats with a bit of a twist…brownies with cinnamon, pumpkin muffins with honey, chocolate chip cookies with coffee.  My goal is to create recipes that are approachable, but interesting, because those are the kind I like best.  Everybody loves banana bread or chocolate cupcakes, but what can I do to make that first bite a tad surprising?  

In light of this baking ideology, and the approaching holiday, I set out to spice up a seasonal favorite – cornbread.  I’ve had some stone-ground cornmeal hanging out in my apartment for a while now – remnants of a one-off chili and cornbread night – and it’s been begging to be used.  I think it felt left out because every time I reached into the cabinet to pull out my baking ingredients, I passed it over in favor of WWWF or whole wheat pastry flour.   I figured it deserved its moment in the spotlight too, but what to do with it?

Maple Banana Cornbread sounds good to me!  This is a really fun recipe that has no added fat and is very low in sugar – but you can’t even tell!  I think that’s awesome.  Just make sure you use a cornmeal that’s 100% whole grain to keep it 100% whole foods.

Recipe:

1 cup stone ground cornmeal

3/4 cup white whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2  teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 medium bananas, mashed

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 egg white

1/2 cup skim milk

Preheat the oven to 350*F. Spray an 8 x 4-inch loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside.  In a large bowl, mix cornmeal, white whole wheat flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda.  In a separate bowl, mix together bananas, maple syrup, egg white and skim milk.  Stir the banana mixture into the dry ingredients until just blended. Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 35-40 minutes.

I’m really excited about my Maple Banana Cornbread because it came out exactly the way I was hoping it would.  It has the nutty flavor and slightly crumbly texture of cornbread with added sweetness and moistness from the maple syrup and bananas.  This one’s a keeper!

I like the tops of sweet breads best because they’re the softest!

Do you have a spruced up cornbread recipe?