Cookie Butter White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Remember how my Internet was getting fixed this weekend? Turns out my idiot darling dogs chewed through the cable outside again- so we had the Internet guys come rewire it. After they fixed it, I duct taped over the cord AND painted it the color of our house to avoid that happening again. THE NEXT DAY THE CORD WAS RIPPED OUT AGAIN!! $210 later, we decided to wait to reinstall the cable until we have an indestructible pipe to cover the wire. Therefore, my blogging will continue to be sparse and from my phone & most likely riddled with grammatical errors. Dogs, you are standing on thin ice, I tell ya.
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Onto sweeter, much happier things.
First though, a warning. If you are one of many getting ready for bikini season, this post will be cruel to read. I’m in the process of shopping for a bathing suit for my post-pregnancy bod and these cookies just set back my shopping date another month! Just kidding.. But seriously.

I made these cookies in a weak moment, er, half hour last night when Joey and I were talking about this past Sunday’s sermon which involved an analogy using chocolate chip cookies- I tried hard to concentrate on the message despite my watering mouth.

Anyways, we were talking about it tonight and ten minutes later we were clawing through the cupboards looking for chocolate chips and flour!

No chocolate chips! but when has that ever stopped me? All we could find was white chocolate almond bark so thats what we used. White chocolate chips would have been better, but when a cookie craving hits, you just surrender to the contents of your baking cupboard.

My sister-in-law sent me a care package just before Gabby was born that was full of all sorts of goodies, including apple strudel coffee (swoon) and speculoos cookie butter. Into the batter it went! (Not the coffee, although apple coffee is my love.)

Speculoos are Dutch cookies best eaten with coffee, and are a special treat. Some genius decided to make a sort of peanut butter-like spread out of them, thus completing my life. And these cookies!

Speculoos + white chocolate= bikini season can wait.

Gabs really wanted one, but her little fingers were apparently tasty enough for her liking!
Make these tonight 🙂

~M

White chocolate Speculoos butter cookies

Adapted from original tollhouse recipe

Ingredients
2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup cookie butter
2 cups white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. In the bowl of a mixer, beat sugars, eggs, butter and vanilla until combined. Slowly incorporate the dry mixture until combined. Add cookie butter until incorporated. Stir in white chocolate.

Chill dough for 30-45 minutes in fridge, then arrange into balls and bake for 9-11 minutes. Serve warm and melty!

Book Review: The Giver

I needed a quick read this past weekend, something to sit down with and just relax and not get sucked into. So I re-read The Giver, by Lois Lowry. If you never had to read it in high school, I highly suggest it! It’s another of my favorites.

 

 

It’s a story about a community where there is no color, no sense of love or family, and there are no memories of a world where there they had any of those things. By choosing ‘sameness’, this community believes they can avoid strife completely- family ‘units’ are selected by a committee, live in a dwelling together, and separate when the children grow and are selected for their own family units. Career paths are chosen for each person by another committee who judge each person’s aptitude. All aspects of life are viewed on a basis of usefulness and efficiency rather than emotions and personal choices. The story follows a boy named Jonas who, when it is his turn to be chosen for a career path, is selected to be the community’s next Receiver of Memory- a rare selection. The Receiver of Memory holds all past memories of the world- love and hate, war and famine, colors and music, none of which is known by anyone but the Receiver. He is a part of the community only to hold these memories in order to aid the committees with his wisdom of past times when they come across a problem they do not know how to solve. This story deals with Jonas discovering that his utopian world is actually dystopian- and coming to realize that he will have to choose his path on his own for the first time in his life. 

It’s quite a short book, and perfect for a little bit of light reading with some really amazing insights to living an imperfect world.

Enjoy!

~K

P.S. Goes really well with a good cup of coffee and some of M’s Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies…..

Christmas Cookie Roundup 2012

I am a huge lover of Christmas baking. More importantly, the Christmas cookies. Mm mm mm. I know you can eat cookies anytime of the year, but something about the holiday season almost makes it a LAW that you have to indulge. If I’m wrong, I don’t want to be right.

So in the spirit of the cookie baking season, I have rounded up a list of my favorite things to bake for my Christmas platters!

1. Peanut Butter Blossoms

2. Scotcheroos

3. Eagle Brand Cookies

4. Old- Fashioned Sugar Cookies

5. Peanut Butter Pretzel Bites

6. Peppermint Bark

7. Chewy Gingersnap Cookies

8. Reindeer Chow

9. Marshmallow Snowmen (use as stirrers for Hot Chocolate or coffee!! SO cute!)

10. Amaretti’s

11. Brown Sugar Shortbread

12. Almond Tarts

13. Snowball Cookies (AKA Mexican Wedding Cookies)

14. Nutter Butter Balls

15. Hot Chocolate on a Stick

The pictures of some of the goodies are the courtesy of the original bakers of these goodies! I can’t wait to get started… Joey and Baby Judah are the best taste-testers out there. 😉

Merry Christmas!
~M

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies

These, my friends, are what you’ve been waiting for. All of the classic deliciousness of chocolate chip cookies, all the richness and creaminess of a peanut butter cookie, and a bit of salty pretzel crunch as a curveball that scores the home run. I’ve had this cookie recipe bookmarked for months- but kept putting off baking them because I knew that once that mixer got those ingredients combined, there was no stopping the energizer bunny that is my mouth.

I love love love cookies. My great-aunt Kathy used to bring me cookies every once in a while at college, and they were always gone within a few days. She made the puffiest peanut butter chocolate chip cookie you ever saw, and the chewiness and melt-in-your-mouth taste left me licking the plate clean wondering why in the world I shared them with my roommates. Ever since then, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies have been my absolute favorite. Until I saw this recipe, which added crushed pretzels!!

I can’t resist the salty-sweet combo- I promise I only had seven  two bites of cookie dough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, I have to  be honest. I didn’t even bake these! Katie and I spent all our time figuring out how we were going to make this combined blog work and the little sister decided she wanted to bake something while we played on our computers. “What should I bake?” dear little sister asked. And my mind immediately went to that wonderful cookie that I knew would cause me to lose all control. I pointed at the poor neglected little recipe on my printer and set her to the task, while we worked hard on our blog all afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously, hard at work.

And then we had a cookie! And you should, too.

 

 

 

~M

 

 

 

 

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies 

adapted from “Satisfy my Sweet Tooth”

 makes about 3 dozen medium cookies

 

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 sticks (12 Tbsp) unsalted butter at room temperature

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 cup creamy peanut butter

2 eggs, room temperature

3 cups pretzels, chopped

1 1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 tsp salt

 

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine butter, sugar, and PB and beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs and mix until combined. Add flour, salt, and baking soda and mix until combined. Mix in 1/2 cup of crushed pretzels and chocolate chips.

Place remaining crushed pretzels in a small bowl. Using a spoon or cookie scoop, drop balls of dough into crushed pretzels and roll lightly to coat. Then place on cookie sheet.

Bake for 12 min, the cookies will look slightly underbaked when you take them out. This is GOOD! That means they will stay nice and chewy for the whole two days they last on your counter 🙂