Sometimes a cookie comes along and like any great love affair, you just know it’s The One.
As much as I love Pinterest and Instagram and my cookbook collection for finding new recipes, sometimes I find it fun to look back over old ones I’ve clipped over the years and test the recipes to see if they still pass the test of time.
I have so many of these kinds of recipes (from emails, newspapers, magazines and handwritten by friends) that I have binders for each type of food category (I have about 20 in all). Cleaning out my bookshelves yesterday I found my cookie binder– something I haven’t looked at in months.
You see, most of my favorite cookies– like these Ginger Chews — I’ve made so many times over the years that I’ve memorized the recipe.
In the back of the binder I came across a cookie I haven’t made in probably five years, and I thought I’d take it out for a spin yesterday.
Triple Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies.
I had to make a run to the store to get the peanut butter chips, but that was a small sacrifice in the pursuit for cookie perfection.
Other than the chips, you probably have all the ingredients on hand.
While at the store I splurged on that Scharffenberger Dark Chocolate Bar.
In another life I was a food buyer for a high-end retailer and this bar was one I discovered early on. I met the owner and I loved his products (he also made champagne, if I recall correctly) and I sold them both to scads of adoring fans.
Back to baking.
So I broke up this bar and added some semi-sweet chocolate chips into the mix as well. It’s a flexible recipe– use any good chocolate (bars, chips or mix of both) and feel free to add more than the original recipe calls for (I doubled the chocolate amount and added slightly more of the peanut butter chips as well).
The dough is very similar to one for a chocolate chip cookie except for the addition of cocoa and the addition of these highly addictive peanut butter chips.
This is what the dough looked like near the end.
And then here’s what it looked like with the chips and chocolate chunks added in.
Now you can make these cookies any size you want, but if you want them to not be too thin, refrigerate your dough until it’s really well chilled (otherwise they will really spread out).
Some of my cookies I baked right away, and some I did with the refrigerated dough — and I actually like both crisper and more chewy versions.
And here’s one last tip I will share with you.
Whenever I make any cookies with chips in them, I always reserve about one quarter of the add-ins to push into the warm cookies as soon as they get out of the oven. This way the recipient gets a strong and tantalizing visual of the contents of the cookie, and all those barely melted chunks and chips are really eye-catching.
In other words, outwards facing chips = sex appeal.
I cooked up a huge double batch, and packed up all but a few cookies for my family.
I had an endodontist I wanted to thank for giving us a break on a procedure. An Instagram pal I wanted to surprise. Neighbors got some, too — and so did a couple pals I hadn’t seen in a while.
Think of this cookie as the combination of a brownie, Reese’s peanut butter cup and chocolate chip cookie.
If like me you’re in love with those Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups from Trader Joe’s, this is the cookie for you — a match made in cookie heaven.
But be prepared; true love will have you doing all kinds of things you never thought possible (like eating more cookies in one sitting than is considered decent).
- 1½ C. all-purpose flour
- ½ C. unsweetened cocoa powder
- ¾ tsp. baking soda
- ¼ tsp. salt
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 1 C. sugar
- ¼ C. light brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1½ tsp. vanilla
- 1⅔ C. (10 oz.) peanut butter chips
- 1 C. semisweet chocolate chips or bittersweet (I use more like 2 C., using a combination of a great dark chocolate bar broken up and chocolate chips)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a bowl sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.
- In electric mixer, beat together butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined well.
- Beat in flour mixture until just combined. Add in peanut butter chips and chocolate -- only enough to combine.
- Spoon dough out onto greased cookie sheet or Silpat and bake for about 12 minutes until cookies are set (and no longer look wet). Let them firm up on cookie sheet and then enjoy!
I’m waiting for my delivery Sarah! Give the girl a bone why don’t ya!
I will try to bring you some soon! You’re such a great baker — I’ll be curious what you think of them…
Well I never thought about giving a cookie SEX APPEAL…but man, oh man, it sure works with these. Your cookie jar must always be full.
Hey Laurie! I was thinking about sex appeal because I’m pretty finicky about my cookies and I get super upset when I waste stomach space on a bland one… I think it’s time I did a drop off to you and my other pal down the street, don’t you? BTW, your St. Patrick’s items on IG are genius!
Please post your recipe for those delicious looking “Ginger Chews”.
I so enjoy your food blogging odyssey.
Hello Lacy! I’ve posted the recipe for the ginger cookies before and if the hyperlink embedded in this post doesn’t work for you, just go to the search bar at the top of my home page and search “ginger” or “ginger chews” and the post with the recipe at the end should come right up. I just made those this morning for a neighbor who is flying out to Mexico today. They are her favorite cookie and I make them for her often! Cheers — and thanks so much for the really kind words and encouragement!
I am going to the store now for the PB chips. Can’t think of a better way to spend a fri night!