Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are officially my favourite cookies in the whole wide world. Except for any variation of Honey & Oat cookies. Or maybe Blueberry. OK. OK. I know I’m a glutton! I love cookies.

Anyhow, I tragically lost my recipe a few years ago. The original was given to me by my “nutritionist” aunt. I’m sure it was an accident because the ingredients went against everything she ever taught us (or rather, lectured us about!).

To my delight, her son’s girlfriend, Katie, shared her own recipe with me last week. And the results were amazing! Thank you KVL!

Here’s what I used:

2 cups peanut butter (crunchy/ chunky – different brands have different names for it. It should have pieces and not totally creamy/ smooth)

2 cups powdered sugar (1 white, 1 brown)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp oil

¼ cup water

2 eggs

300 gms milk chocolate chips

First, I pre-heated the oven to 150 C/ 350 F and prepared the cookie tray. I lined it with butter paper and also rubbed some vegetable oil on it.

I used Sundrop Peanut Butter (henceforth called PB). Since I wasn’t eating it on a sandwich (yummy PBJ sandwiches!!), I didn’t bother running to the specialty store to buy a tub of imported Skippy PB.

I poured it into my measuring cup...

Added the water and oil. Gave it a good mix. This is important because PB is so heavy and sticky, it needs to loosen up a bit so that it’s easy to mix in with the other ingredients.

Added the vanilla essence and mixed again...

In a bowl, I mixed the two sugars & baking powder to combine well... (Oh and PS – don’t worry if you can’t get your hands on brown sugar. When I used to make it earlier, I just used white. Brown adds to the flavour but your cookies will still be awesome without it.)

I made a well in the middle and cracked in the eggs...

I added the PB mixture...

Can you see how chunky it is? I LOVE chunky PB...!!! It makes me feel all warm & fuzzy! AK still doesn’t see what the fuss is about, even though he devoured half the batch as soon as it was out of the oven! Anyway, I tried mixing it with a spoon but it was to hard to handle. So I just used my hands to combine and knead the mix...

I then added the chocolate chips. Two things to note here... I added them last because it’s so hot in India that I didn’t want them to melt with all the mixing and kneading. Secondly, earlier when I didn’t have access to chips, I would buy a block of regular cooking chocolate and chop it up. The brand that was available to me was Morde. It’s a bit painful to chop but it works just fine. Depending on my mood, I often prefer those uneven chunks to perfectly sized chips!

I had 3 x 100 gm packs so I added them 1 at a time, mixing well between batches...

Using my ice-cream scoop, I placed 8 mounds on the prepared cookie tray. Using the scoop ensures more or less equal sized cookies.

 Also, they expand and spread during baking, so they need to be spaced well.

According to AK, these looked like funny choco-chip pakoras (savoury fritters)! So using my hands, I then picked up each mound and rolled it into a smooth ball... Flattening it just a little when replacing it on the tray...

I popped them into the oven for 15 mins. They came out like this, still slightly soft and squishy...

I allowed them to cool on the tray for about 10 mins, until they hardened slightly. 

Then I carefully moved them onto the cooling rack to let them cool for another 30 mins. This is really important because if you put away cookies that haven’t cooled properly, they will become soggy...

I made 3 batches and got (8 x 3) 24 large cookies, which I packed away into an airtight box. If AK were to allow them to last, they would be good for atleast a week...

Verdict: PB is best consumed in these cookies!! Thanks again KVL!

Serving Suggestions: Apart from the traditional dipping in milk/ coffee, these go extremely well crushed over vanilla ice-cream!!