Peanut Butter and Chocolate Blondies

Brownies may be my favorite sort of cookie, but sometimes I have a hankering for the non-chocolate, blondie version. They are great with butterscotch chips, but they are phenomenal with peanut butter and chocolate, a time-honored flavor combination that never lets me down.

These come together really quickly and I hardly ever wait for them to cool before I dive into the pan.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Blondies

Ingredients:

• 1¼ cups all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½cup butter, softened
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup peanut butter chips
• ½ cup chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9-inch square baking pan.
2. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt, whisking well to break up any clumps and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, with an electric mixer at medium speed, cream together the butter with sugar and brown sugar until fluffy.
4. Add the egg and vanilla and beat well. Gradually add dry ingredients, beating on low speed until thoroughly combined.
5. Fold in the chips and make sure they're all well incorporated into the dough.
6. Spread the dough in prepared baking pan and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until set. 
7. Cool on wire rack and then cut into bars.

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Hazelnut Thumbprint Cookies

Another cookie from the Christmas Cookie Arsenal, these are so simple to make and really satisfying. My older daughter tried one yesterday and said, "It's too bad there aren't more." I gave her 'a look' for being critical and she said, "What?! It's a compliment! I could eat these all day!"

Just for her, I am baking another batch.

Hazelnut Thumbprint Cookies

Yield: 20 cookies

Ingredients:

• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 large egg, separated, each part lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup toasted skinned hazelnuts, ground
• 2 T confectioner's sugar
• Raspberry jam
  

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
   


2. Put butter and ½ cup sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
   


3. Add egg yolk and vanilla, and mix well. Reduce speed to low.
   


4. Add flour and salt, and mix until just combined. Form the dough into a ball, put it in a plastic bag and refrigerate for 2 hours.


5. Stir together toasted hazelnuts and 2 tablespoons confectioner's sugar in a small bowl until well-mixed.
   


6. Break off small pieces of the chilled dough and roll into 1-inch balls; dip balls in egg white, then in hazelnut-sugar mixture, coating well.
   


7. Space the cookies 1 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper or a Silpat mat.
   


8. Press down center of each ball with your thumb.
   


9. Bake for 10 minutes.
   


10. Remove from oven; press down centers again with a spoon or your thumb if you have asbestos hands.
    


11. Return to oven. Bake cookies until golden brown, 8 to 10 minutes more.
    


12. Let cool slightly on sheets on wire racks.
    


13. Fill each center with jam.


14. Devour.
    

Notes:

• Silpat mats. I used to think that parchment paper was the key to perfect cookies and rolls until I burned a batch of crescent rolls that had been placed on parchment paper covered one of my "well-seasoned" cookie sheets. Even two layers of parchment can't keep things from burning on a dark sheet.
  
  Then I tried those air-insulated sheets, but didn't like the way that they had no lip to speak of.
  
  I finally broke down and bought a Silpat mat and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to bake.
  


• Filling: People always seem to scream for strawberry or raspberry filling, but honestly my favorite is black currant.
  
  I bet if you changed the extract to almond extract, replaced the hazelnuts with ground almonds, and used cherry preserves, you'd have one damn-good cookie.
  
  Wow. That is almost worth a trip to the store for cherry preserves!
  

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Snowball Cookies

Also known as Pecan Butterballs, Mexican Wedding Cake Cookies, Russian Teacakes. These divine concoctions of ground pecans, confectioner's sugar, butter and flour are irresistible. Fragile and crumbly, yes, but buttery, rich and nutty with that airy coating of 10x pulverized sugar, they beg to be devoured.

Of course, now my kitchen looks as though a hot-air balloon filled with confectioner's sugar collided with a grove of pecan trees, but hey, it's Christmas!

Snowball Cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks of butter, softened
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup toasted pecans, chopped very fine or ground in a food processor
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar for dusting and rolling

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.


2. Toast the pecans first. Place whole or halved pecans on an ungreased sheet pan and toast in a 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes, stirring a few times until the nuts are light brown and fragrant. Don't let them burn.
   


3. Let cool in a bowl and set aside. Grind them in a food processor when they have cooled.


4. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or spray with vegetable shortening spray, or do what I do and place your Silpat baking mat on the sheet.


5. Using a stand mixer or heavy duty hand mixer with the beater attachment, beat butter on medium to high speed about 2 minutes or until fluffy. Make sure that there are no clumps of butter.
   


6. Add the confectioner's sugar and beat again, scraping the sides of the bowl frequently.
   


7. Add the vanilla extract and salt and beat again.


8. Turn the mixer to low. Slowly and carefully, add the flour and ground pecans to the mixing bowl 1 cup at a time, scraping the bowl after every addition. It should go without saying, but remember to turn off the mixer when you scrape the bowl!
   


9. By now, the mixer will have started to slow down. Don't over mix, just mix only until the dry ingredients are blended.


10. Using a cookie scoop, ice cream scoop or teaspoon, measure out a 1-inch piece of cookie batter, and roll them between your palms, shaping them into 1-inch balls.
    


11. Place on prepared pans leaving a little room between cookies to allow for spreading.


12. Bake in 350 degree over for 14 minutes or until cookies are almost firm and the edges are slightly browned. Let them cool just enough to handle.


13. Measure out 1 cup of confectioners' sugar into a large bowl. Sift the sugar if necessary to remove all lumps.


14. Working with about 5 - 6 warm cookies at a time, roll them in the bowl of confectioner's sugar until they're completely coated. Place on a clean parchment covered cookie sheet.


15. When the cookies are all coated, start over again, and roll them in powdered sugar a second time. Shake off excess and place on cookies sheets.


16. Yields about 4 dozen cookies.
    

Notes:

• I like to place these in mini-muffin papers.


• If the butter hasn't all been whipped up, some of the cookies will spread out a bit when cooking. They still taste great.


• I always seem to make an unholy mess with the confectioner's sugar every time I make these. I think I saw one recipe that called for you to fill a brown paper bag with the sugar and putting the cookies in there a few at a time and gently tossing them around in the bag. It might be worth a try.
  

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Cookie-Palooza is Coming!

I've been busy with other things the past few weeks, though if really pressed, I can't even recall what they were. Scratch that, I remember now: I hosted a big birthday event for my youngest. I made a ton of food and took pictures of none of it. I'm bad. It was tasty though.

I can say that I've spent the past week or so planning Cookie-Palooza. I used to make Christmas goodies to give to people, but fell out of the habit much the same way I fell out of the Christmas card habit. This year I'd like to change all that, and what better way than by baking 3 - 4 dozen of 10 different kinds of cookies?

It's ambitious, I know. Also slightly insane, but that's how I do things.

Today I'm having a mini-birthday to-do for the same birthday kid as last weekend because my sister couldn't make it the first time around. Since we devoured the gigantic ice cream cake days ago, today I'm making a pan of my favorite brownies: the eponymous Crisis Brownies.

I call them Crisis Brownies not because of any exotic addition of vitamin THC or anything, but because sometimes when you're in the throes of a crisis, you just need something super-chocolatey.

These brownies fit the bill.

Babs's Crisis Brownies

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup all purpose flour, sifted
  
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
  
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
  
• 6 T cold, unsalted butter, cut into large, 1-T pieces
  
• 2 T heavy cream
• 12 oz (at least) semi-sweet chocolate
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• ½ cup chocolate chunks (optional)
• ½ cup chopped nuts (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 and spray an 11 x 7 inch baking pan with cooking spray.
   


2. In a small bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa and baking soda with a whisk to break up any clumps of cocoa.


3. Bring about 1 ½ inches of water to a boil in the bottom of your double boiler; reduce heat and then in the top pan of the double boiler* heat the butter and sugar until the butter starts to melt, add the heavy cream, and then gradually add your chocolate, stirring constantly to be sure that the mixture doesn't burn. Burnt chocolate makes the angels weep.
   
   The chocolate can be morsels, blocks or squares, and in my book, the more the better. I usually use a mixture of various semi-sweet chocolates.
   
   *If you don't have a double boiler, you can make your own by placing a stainless steel, glass or ceramic bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.
   


4. Once the chocolate is all melted, add the vanilla extract and then remove from the heat immediately and scrape into a large bowl.
   


5. Set this bowl inside a larger bowl which has some ice on the bottom and let the chocolate mixture cool.
   
   Before adding the eggs, you can test the temperature of the chocolate mixture like I do, by sticking a clean finger into the mix and tasting it. You kill two birds with one stone this way because you can also test how sweet the mixture is. Win-win.
   


6. Add the eggs, mixing well.
   


7. Gradually stir in the flour mixture and mix until smooth. Now you can add extras like chopped nuts or, my favorite, more chocolate.
   
   I usually use about 10-12 of some wonderful Belgian dark chocolate truffles chopped coarsely.
   


8. Pour batter into prepared pan.


9. Bake 25-35 minutes until a toothpick jabbed into the center comes out clean. This recipe makes very dense, moist and fudgy brownies.


10. Transfer pan to a rack to cool before cutting the brownies.
    


11. If you serve them warm with ice cream you will thank me.

Notes:

1. These brownies may be a lot of work, what with the double boiler and all, but they are worth every lick of effort.


2. Even made with generic store brand semi-sweet chocolate morsels, this recipe blows away any boxed mix brownies you could make; when made with more expensive baking chocolate, they will bring tears to your eyes.
   


3. I believe that if you doubled the eggs in the recipe, you'd end up with a lighter, airier, cake-like brownie, if that's your thing. I am firmly in the dense, moist and fudge-like brownie camp, so I stick to just the 2 eggs.
   
   Don't get me wrong, cake has its place, but when I want a brownie, I want it to be somewhere in the territory between cake and fudge.
   

A closer look at the deep, fudgy moistness.

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