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Thursday 13 January 2011

Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies, Chocolate Chip Tea Cookies and Baking Resolutions


Happy New Year everyone!! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a slightly more eventful New Year’s Eve than I did. I fell asleep at 11pm on the 31st so I slept right through the countdown and all the fireworks. As a result, the fact that it is a new year hasn’t hit me quite yet. I hope it hits soon!

The last cookies I made on my cookie baking spree are these Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies and Chocolate Chip Tea Cookies. I'm not sure why they're called 'Tea' cookies but when they taste this good, who cares? And I can't believe it's taken me three whole posts to toot my own horn about how amazingly all my cookies turned out! Actually, I might have already hinted at how great I , ahem, I mean, they were, I can't remember ;) But considering that before that day, any thoughts of cookie dough (or any kind of dough for that matter) made me break out in a cold sweat, I was pretty impressed with my efforts! So impressed that I now want to take on the dough world! On that note, here are my baking resolutions for 2011:

 - Bake bread. Bake lots of bread. Bake lots of bread style stuff; cinnamon swirls, stollen, honey rolls, regular bread, bread, bread bread!
- Bake a pie. I have never baked a pie before but on my list are Pecan pie, Apple pie and Pumpkin pie.
- Bake more cookies
- Bake more cheesecakes
- Practice decorating layer cakes

Basically there's lots of dough in my future. I can't wait!

These recipes are both from Brown Eyed Baker. Learn her name as I'm going to try out a gazillion of her recipes next year! Till then, I leave you with these.

Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies

Oh, we don't have Hershey's kisses in England, which is what the original recipe calls for, so I used Lindt mini chocolate balls. I think they were the perfect size, and Lindt chocolate is far superior to Hersheys, so I was happy. But you can use either - or any other chocolate of around that size.

Ingredients
48 Lindt Chocolate Balls, unwrapped
½ cup shortening
¾ cup peanut butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
Sugar

1 - Preheat oven to 190° C / Gas Mark 5. Remove wrappers from chocolates and put the unwrapped chocolate in a plastic bag in the freezer.
2 - Beat shortening and peanut butter in a large bowl until well blended.
3 - Add the granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy.
4 - Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well.
5 - Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.
6 - Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet.
7 - Bake 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately press a chocolate kiss into the centre of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.
Makes about 4 dozen.

Chocolate Chip Tea Cookies

Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
226g butter
½ cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups miniature chocolate chips, divided

1 – Preheat oven to 190°C / Gas Mark 5
2 – Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add vanilla and mix well.
3 - Gradually add flour. Stir in 1 cup miniature chocolate chips.
4 - Shape into 1” balls and place 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes.
5 - Remove to wire rack to cool.
6 - Place ½ cup miniature chocolate chips in a sealed plastic bag and microwave until melted; about 30 seconds. 
7 - Snip off a small corner of the bag and drizzle chocolate on top of cold cookies. Chill for 5 minutes or until chocolate is set. 
Store at room temperature.

5 comments:

Anya Posh said...

Looks delightful! I just added you to my blogroll of fabulous food blogs!

Ms Afropolitan said...

They look delicious!

And did you say breads, pies, cheesecakes? Oh yes, bring on 2011, it IS a new year darling, get baking!
LOL, can't believe you fell asleep before the countdown. That said, I was so ill xmas day that I kept myself away from people and actually had a microwave meal all alone.
Didn't help that I saw everyones xmas food tweets. sniff sniff. Anyway, better now and as I lost weight whilst I was ill I can now visit your site without worrying about getting sugar and dough cravings :)

Unknown said...

Ok Snood, you have inspired me to start baking from scratch (rather than from the box:)I will try out the Chocolate Chip Tea Cookies recipe and get back to you...If I have any mishap whatsoever, I will blame it on you..lollll....

Unknown said...

@A.Posh - Thank you! I'm extremely flattered!

@Ms Afropolitan - Awww, you spent Christmas day alone with a microwave meal?? I feel so bad for you! Hopefully you made up for it on NYE! Yup, lots of baking this year. One day, we will finally manage to meet up on purpose and I'll bring you a sample of that week's baking :)

@deliciousinpink - Trouble! Welcome to my blog! I'm holding you to your baking from scratch promise, you need to report to me how well it all goes. And it will go well, trust me :)

Uzo said...

Oooh....Very nice Vickii..

Have made pies, baked bread, made cheesecake brownies....LOL...

Well done....