My Sweet Tooth

For as long as I can remember I have had a major sweet tooth. My biggest weakness is candy which my family, friends, and dentist can all attest to; however, no sweet is safe around me. I am just not one of those people who can have a bag of candy or homemade cookies in the kitchen and not eat them. If sweets are in the house and I know about it then they are gone within days… okay hours… fine, I’ll fess up they are gone within minutes… So, while I love baking sweets I have to either give most of them away shortly after making them or wait until we are going to be with friends or family who join me in demolishing them. A weekend in Mentone with three guys seemed like the perfect opportunity to try a new cookie recipe or two.

I couldn’t decide between two cookie recipes I found on Smitten Kitchen’s blog, so I made both. The first is a Peanut Butter Cookie that has both chocolate and peanut butter chips in it and the second is Smitten Kitchen’s favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie. Like most cookie recipes both of these you mix the wet and dry ingredients separately and then add the dry slowly to the wet. Once the dough is formed you fold the chips into it. The only unusual part to me is in the Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe where you use cold and not softened butter. I am not quite sure why he calls for cold butter, but I imagine there is some reason I am not aware of for it. It did take longer for it incorporate with the other ingredients. I followed both recipes exactly with the exception of leaving the nuts out of the chocolate chip cookies (since apparently boys’ prefer cookies with no nuts). Both cookies required longer baking times for me, but I think the cold weather may have played a part in this. Either way be sure and watch them and just adjust the baking times as needed without over baking them.

While everyone liked both cookies the Peanut Butter were hands down the favorite. The Peanut Butter cookies had great flavor, texture, and chip to cookie ratio. I really liked not only the peanut butter flavor, but also the addition of the two kinds of chips. They were sweet, but without being super sweet. They were thick, but not chewy. They don’t really brown, so be sure and don’t over bake them waiting for them to brown on the edges. These were enjoyed by all and will certainly be repeated! The Chocolate Chip cookies were good, but nothing special and I felt like they were missing something. I will say that I do think that this recipe needs the nuts in it for the extra texture and flavor and this is probably what I sensed what missing. If you like cookies with nuts then I would love it if you gave it a try and told me how they turned out. These also spread a lot on me and ended up being a fairly thin cookie and I tend to prefer a little bit thicker texture. Russ rates the chocolate chip cookies a 9 and the peanut butter cookies a 10.