Good morning! How was your weekend?
We put our Christmas tree up (photos to follow, because this is a blog) I went to Starbucks with my little sis for Peppermint Hot Chocolates (already Instagrammed, because what was I supposed to do, just *drink* my drink? Uhh, no.) and Jason and I watched Home Alone AND Elf! Winner! The weekend was a total peach, so let’s start this week off right too! With cookies filled with lots of good stuff! With chocolate, and peanut butter cups, and pretzels. Yum.
I made these last week, and not for any particular reason. They were ‘just because’ cookies. I like ‘just because’ things best. ‘Just because’ flowers are way better than flowers on Valentine’s day, in my opinion. And buying Jason a new jumper ‘just because’ is much more fun than buying him a new jumper for Christmas. (I’m stressing about this year’s Christmas shopping. It’s all snuck up on me. I’m not ready.) They were made ‘just because’ on a gloomy Wednesday afternoon, and send in to the office with my love first thing Thursday morning.
You should know before we start that I’m ever so sorry, but these cookies need chilling before baking. I know, I know. Last time I made cookies I had a silly rant about how Nobody Has Time For Chilling Cookies. But chilling really does make everything taste SO much better, and since in the past few months I’ve been doing this new thing where I don’t make and eat an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies the second a craving hits, I don’t mind having to exercise a little patience. On that note, I don’t really know why I made these cookies, since I’m not really eating wheat any more. Call it masochism or something, I don’t know. I do know that I just became someone who cuts a cookie in half, and saves the rest for another day. Not sure if that deserves a medal, or a slap around the face. With a baking tray.
Makes approximately 18.
Ingredients:
225g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
300g soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
400g plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 tsps bicarbonate of soda
Small pinch of salt
100g chocolate (dark/milk, as per your preference)
6 Reese’s peanut butter cups (the large kind, sold in packs of three)
50g salted pretzels
- Line two baking trays with parchment paper. The oven will need to be preheated to 170degrees celsius, but only after the cookie dough has had an hour in the fridge.
- Cream together the butter and sugar, until pale and fluffy. Then add in the eggs one at a time, mixing well with each addition. Pour in the vanilla extract, and mix again.
- Add in the flour, bicarbonate of soda & salt, turn the mixer (if using) down to a slow speed, and combine the dry ingredients with the butter and sugar mixture.
- Chop the chocolate and peanut butter cups into smallish pieces, and break a few of the pretzels up a little. I left about half of them whole. Throw all the chocolate and pretzels into the cookie dough mixture, and combine by hand. (And I mean literally by hand. My mix was too stiff to use a wooden spoon, so I got right on in there with my hands.)
- Roll the dough out into pieces a little bigger than a golf ball, space them out onto the baking trays, cover with cling film, and leave to cool and rest in the fridge for an hour. Any left over dough can be squidged together, wrapped in cling film, and placed into the fridge to be cooked up in a second batch or at a later date.
- Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celsius, and when it’s up to temperature, bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes. Mine were ready at exactly the 10 minute mark. When you take them out of the oven, they should be lightly golden in colour and feel firm at the edges, but will be soft and puffy inside.
- Allow to cool for about 5 minutes or so on the trays, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. They actually tasted nicer completely cool, though you should probably taste one warm and one cold just to make sure. Baker’s duty, and all that…
