Soft and Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies

I've always wanted to make peanut butter cookies. Charming in its simplicity, yet undeniably delicious. And addicting. These make your house smell like peanut butter heaven, and one bite into the soft and chewy cookie leaves you pining for some more. And pretty soon, you'll find that all the cookies are mysteriously gone...

These cookies not only have a soft chewy crumb inside, but also have a subtle crispy sugar coating and criss-cross pattern top. See? Pretty and yummy. Who said perfection isn't possible?

Here's how you do it:

Thoroughly cream the butter and peanut butter.

Add the sugars (granulated sugar and brown sugar). Beat thoroughly. Add the egg. Beat thoroughly.

Add milk and vanilla. Add flour mixture (flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt).

Add the Reese's peanut butter cups (or peanut butter chips) and chocolate chips. In retrospect, I feel like it wouldn't have hurt if I'd added more Reese's peanut butter cups than I did.

Now make tablespoon-sized cookie dough balls, toss in granulated sugar, and make prominent criss-cross patterns with a fork. I arranged my cookies too closely together in the photo above. In my later batches, I placed only 5 - 6 cookies per sheet. Bake & enjoy!

Love,

Monica

Peanut Butter Cookies

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, originally from Magnolia Bakery Cookbook
Yield: 25 cookies

Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup smooth peanut butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg, preferably at room temperature
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup peanut butter chips (or Reese’s peanut butter cups, chopped into halves)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
For sprinkling: 1 tablespoon granulated sugar

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and the peanut butter together until fluffy. Add the sugars and beat until smooth. Add the egg and mix well. Add the milk and the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture (flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt) and beat thoroughly.

Stir in the peanut butter chips (or Reese’s peanut butter cups) and chocolate chips. Place the 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar into a small bowl. Scoop the cookie dough into tablespoon-sized balls and toss in sugar until lightly coated.

Place onto cookie sheet, leaving a good 3 to 4 inches of space between each cookie for expansion (I fit 5 - 6 cookies comfortably onto a sheet). Using a fork, make a criss cross pattern indentation on each cookie, but do not overly flatten the cookies.

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes. Do not over-bake. Cookies may appear to be underdone, but they are not. Enjoy!

Upside Down Banana Cake

This isn't a fancy cake. No frosting, no layers, nothing glamorous about it. Deb from Smitten Kitchen calls these "everyday cakes," which I think is a perfect description. It's a tea cake, perfect for cold winter afternoons when you just want a big slice of cake.

This cake is really not so different from banana bread, just with the bananas on the bottom.

It's been a while since I've done a step-by-step recipe, but I've provided process shots for this post. I've stopped doing them in the past couple of months; it took too long, I guess, but I also started to concentrate on taking better photos of the finished product. There's still a lot of room for improvement, but food photography around here has made a lot of progress, I think.

Anyways, here's my upside down banana cake, step by step.

First, make the caramel topping for the cake. We're going to use the dry method to make the caramel, which means we'll melt the granulated sugar directly, rather than adding water first.

Place the granulated sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Use a fairly deep pot.

The sugar will begin melting. Give it a little stir to evenly distribute the heat.

It'll turn golden-brown...

Add the butter. Be careful here, as the sugar will bubble and spit.

Mix vigorously.

I forgot to take a picture of this, but spread the caramel evenly on the bottom of a greased 9-inch springform pan. Do the best you can, since the caramel will set very quickly.

Slice the bananas and place them on the bottom of the pan, on top of the caramel.

Whisk together your flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until it is light and fluffy.

Whip in the egg.

And the vanilla.

Fold in about 1/3 of the flour.

Mix in about 1/3 of the buttermilk. Keep on alternating between the buttermilk and flour, until it is all incorporated.

Plop that in your pan.

Bake, and you will get this beautiful, delicious, unassuming cake. (I lowered the baking time to 350 degrees from Smitten Kitchen's original recipe, since 400 degrees caused the edges to burn slightly and created a large dome on the cake.)

The buttermilk cake is soft and fluffy, and not too sweet, paring perfectly with the caramel and banana topping.

Enjoy, all! Happy Presidents' Day!
​Caroline

Upside Down Banana Cake

Click here for the printer-friendly recipe
Cake batter adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients
For the Caramel Topping
⅓ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons butter
¼ teaspoon salt
3 medium ripe bananas, sliced

For the Cake Batter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk mixed with 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar

 

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a 9-inch springform pan.

Make the caramel topping. Place the granulated sugar in a large, deep saucepan over medium heat. The sugar will begin to melt. Give it a couple of stirs to evenly distribute the heat.

When the sugar turns golden brown, add the butter. Be careful; the sugar will bubble and spit. Stir until the caramel is smooth. Spread the caramel on the bottom of the pan. Work quickly, since the caramel will set quickly.

Slice the banana into ½-inch thick pieces. Place on the bottom of the cake.

Make the cake batter. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Cream the butter and sugar until it is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.Fold about ⅓ of the dry ingredients into the butter/egg mixture. Mix in ⅓ of the buttermilk.

Alternate between adding the two until both are entirely incorporated. Evenly spread the batter over the banana slices in the cake pan.

Bake the cake for 1 hour - 1 hour 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

 

Linzer Heart Cookies

I'm going to really honest here for a second. I made these cookies for one reason, and one reason only: I needed to do a cutesy Valentine's Day post for today.

That being said, I do love these cookies. Flaky, buttery, sandwiched with sweet and tart rhubarb (yes, rhubarb!) jam, what's not to love? But I did make the cookies last week of all weekends for posting purposes. In fact, I even got up early so I could make them and take pictures while it was still light out, before I had to go to meetings in the afternoons. (And yes, I do need to set an alarm if I want to get up at 9:50 a.m. College life.)

It does make me wonder how many people make adorable pink baked goodies for Valentine's Day, and how much of it is food bloggers like me. I mean, I love seeing all the amazing Valentine and St. Patrick themed food on the web, but do people do it in real life?

But food blog existentialism aside, you really should make these cookies. If you're not into the cutesy Valentine thing, just change the shape of the cookies. This recipe is very similar to the shortbread I used for these Abbracci cookies, and they make wonderfully tender and delicious cookies.

a. linzer heart cookies 6.jpg

The shortbread pairs wonderfully with the rhubarb jam I used because it has more sour notes than some other flavors, but you can use whatever jam  you want. (Or even Nutella! Hey, it's Valentine's Day, treat yourself!)

So enjoy! Whether or not you celebrate Valentine's Day, you should make these cookies (:

-Caroline

Linzer Heart Cookies

Yields about 3 dozen sandwich cookies

Ingredients
For the Dough
2 ½ cups all purpose flour
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
½ cup sugar
2 egg yolks, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For Assembly
½ cup jam
¼ cup powdered sugar

 

Directions
Mix together the flour, cornstarch, and salt.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks, and then the vanilla. Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined. Do not overmix.

Refrigerate the dough at least 1 hour, or overnight.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough to about half a centimeter thick. With a heart-shaped cookie cutter about 1 ½ inches wide (although any shape works!) to cut out the shapes. Place them on a greased baking sheet.

For half of the cookies, use a smaller cookie cutter to make a heart-shaped hole in the middle.

Gather up the scraps and re-roll the dough. Repeat steps 6 and 7. Continue this process until you run out of dough. Refrigerate the cookies for 1-2 hours.

Just before baking, preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are barely golden.Let the cookies cool completely.

Sift powdered sugar over all the cookies that have a hole in the middle. Microwave the jam for 15-20 seconds, to thin it out. Spread about ½ teaspoon of jam on the remaining cookies. Top with a cookie that has a hole.