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 31^st 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.