Discovering 2014: Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Cookie Sticks. As you can see from my title, the sticks part is debateable! There's a bunch of pins on Pinterest showing these gorgeous cookie sticks, which seemed simple enough. Well, I made cookies, at least. :)

The last time I made chocolate chip cookies from scratch was about a decade ago. I still don't know what I did wrong, but they were absolutely inedible, and I left the baking to my husband for many years afterward. With all the baking I did over the past couple of months though, I was confident I could get this finally right.

I used the "Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies" recipe that my husband had, which I believe was passed on from his mother. I had to mildly modify it, substituting dark brown sugar with light brown and using unsalted butter instead of standard butter.

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Chewy Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• Flour Mix: 
• 2 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• Sugar Mix:
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• Everything Else:
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 11-12oz package of Nestle Peanut Butter & Milk Chocolate Morsels

1. Preheat your oven to 375°F. 
2. Flour Mix: In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt
3. Sugar Mix: Add the granulated sugar, light brown sugar and the softened unsalted butter to your mixer's bowl. Beat on low until blended, then medium-low until light and fluffy.
4. Add the vanilla extract and eggs to the sugar mix. Beat until mixed well.
5. Keep the mixer on low and add the flour mix slowly to the sugar mix. After about a minute you can slowly turn the speed up to medium-high, then continue to mix for about 1-2 more minutes.
6. Stop the mixer and scrape the sides and bottom. Add in your chocolate peanut butter chips and mix on low until mixed in.
7. Put tablespoons of the mix onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
8. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until light golden brown.

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After my dough was ready, my youngest son helped in my first attempt to make the sticks. We rolled chunks of dough into log shape. While these didn't bake into sticks, they did end up oval-shaped and I liked those the best.

I took the rest of the dough and made a massive square, flattening it to about 1/2" thick. My husband used our pizza cutter to cut it into sticks, then we gently pulled it apart.

These turned out so-so. Once they were out I cut some of them even more before they completely cooled. It was much easier to cut them after they baked!

Here's the plate of oval cookies!

Here's the plate of the pizza cutter cookies! The most stick-like ones I ended up with were from slicing a cookie blob into four.

The recipe is great, but I think I'll just stick to forming the cookies normally from now on! Or into ovals. :) Tomorrow's project is a Kawasaki Rose!