Peanut Butter Surprises

The combination of chocolate and peanut butter is a total no brainer for me. I found these online at Martha Stewart's site A smooth peanut butter sealed inside a chocolate-chocolate-chip dough was just too much to pass up.


Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar (divided 1, 1/4)
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (this didn't make sense to me - I'll explain later) Line two baking sheets with Silpats (French non stick baking mats). I only have one so I used parchment paper. It works just fine. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and baking soda and set aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment (or hand mixer) beat butter, vegetable shortening, granulated sugar and 1 cup brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy - about 2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing until fluffy, combined between additions. Add vanilla; beat to combine. Gradually add dry ingredients, mix on low speed until fully combined. Add chocolate chips, mix on low just until combined. Cover bowl with plastic wrap; chill until firm, about an hour.
Note: this is where #1 didn't make sense - turning the oven to 350 degrees before putting the mix into the fridge for an hour - I'm sure that wasn't intended.

3. In a small bowl using a rubber spatula, stir together peanut butter and remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar.

4. Drop 1 tablespoon of dough at a time onto baking sheets, spacing cookies about 2 inches apart. (seriously make sure you space them properly). Make a thumbprint in the center of each cookie. Fill thumbprint with 2 tsp peanut butter mixture. Top with a second tablespoon of flattened dough. Carefully mold dough to cover the surprise.





5. Bake until firm, about 12 minutes, rotating halfway through. (because the cookies turned out so large, the baking process took more than 12 minutes - more like 18 minutes) Transfer baking sheets to wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Remove cookies from baking sheets and let cool completely on wire racks.



What I learned:

After reading some of the comments on the Martha Stewart site, I have to agree with other commenters. The flavour - deeeeelicious!!! They're tedious to make and sticky to work with. Once the batter comes out of the fridge and the butter warms up - if you don't keep water on your hands you're going to look like mud pie.

When it says leave 2 inches space - do it - these spread and for me they became monster cookies. That didn't at all take away from the taste but I was expecting a small cookie and and ended up with a frisbee wannabe.

I found putting 2 teaspoons of peanut butter mix on the cookie was making it even messier to work with so I reverted to 1 tsp which doesn't give you enough of a "surprise" in the centre.

I would make them again but next time, I'll leave the batter in the fridge overnight before I work with it and definitely use 2 tsp of peanut butter to get the flavour coming through.



Pssst.....November is Peanut Butter Lover's Month (Nick, is that true or did you make it up) and our friend Nick at The Peanut Butter Boy is asking for your favourite peanut butter recipes. Since I'm such a peanut butter junkie and they're all my favourites, I'll add this one to the mix. I know Psychgrad just made a pretty impressive peanut butter dessert recently and will blog about it soon so stay tuned for that one too.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

There are some food blogs out there that take blogging about food to the next level. Ben at What's Cooking is certainly one of them.


You look at his site and imagine a room full of people working on the the recipes, the photos, site development, etc. But, no, it's really one guy who is really devoted to making his blog the best it can be. Not only that, he is active in several foodie communities.

This post is inspired by Ben's recent post

Bacon Wrapped Chicken Cordon Bleu


4 chicken breasts, boneless skinless
8 strips of bacon (I used turkey bacon)
swiss cheese
garlic
shallots
dry white wine
salt and pepper, to taste
olive oil

Tenderize breasts, season with salt and pepper. Wrap swiss cheese in bacon, which is wrapped inside of the chicken cutlet. I also added a strip of bacon outside of the chicken. Many toothpicks are used to hold it together. I added 2 tbsp of olive oil to a frying pan. Then sauteed the garlic and shallot briefly. Then add the chicken breasts. Once browned, I put the breasts in the oven to cook through. I then deglazed the pan with white wine. After a couple of minutes I added veggies to the pan.

The final results were really good. Thanks for the inspiration Ben!



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Looking for Advice

We're in the market for some new cookware. I regularly use my frying pan and wok, gifts from R's mom when we got our first apartment in Canada in 2002. Originally, they were non-stick pans. But that name certainly does not apply to their current condition.

Every year, R's family does a Christmas gift exchange. Every year, I get..well...let's just say stuff I don't need. I'm very pragmatic about gifts, so I want to make sure (as much as possible) to avoid the annual exchange of junk.

I make a fair number of one pan-type dishes. You can see the type of dishes I make with my frying pan here and wok here. So, I'd like to replace my current large frying pan and wok with better quality ones. In looking around, it seems that the All-Clad product lines are very good. Considering the foods I make, is it better to get a large frying pan or a braiser pan?

Do you swear by any product line? Frying pan or braiser? Any advice would be excellent!

Mandelbrot

Hilary of Nosh With Me tells a lovely family story about her Aunt Helen and this recipe for twice baked cookies called Mandelbrot. They're sort of the Jewish version of biscotti although the texture is generally softer and crumblier (is that's even a word). Kat at A Good Appetite also featured Mandelbrot recently. It's a similar recipe but adds anise to the mix that I'm sure gives it a very distinctive flavour.

Baba (my mother) was never much of a baker but one of the things she used to make was mandelbrot. Literally translated from Yiddish a mandel is an almond (plural it would be mandlen) and brot is bread. Perfect - this recipe has no almonds and doesn't look like bread. It's a cookie and a darned fine one at that. When I saw Hilary's version, well... what can I say - you can already see what happened.

Ingredients

3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup oil
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup chocolate chips

Preparation

Mix eggs and sugar with a wooden spoon. Add vanilla and mix.
Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder together. Add to the egg mixture, alternating with the oil, four times.
Add chocolate chips and mix. Batter will be stiff. (She’s not kidding, it’s stiff!)



Refrigerate overnight, or at least three hours. (Aunt Helen recommended overnight.)
Roll into four logs, approximately 1 1/2″ in diameter.




Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes, remove from oven, and immediately slice into 1″ pieces. (Both H's mom and Aunt Helen said it’s very important to not let the logs cool because they will crack when you slice them.)



Place cookies on their side on cookie sheet and bake 10-15 minutes more.





I learned a couple of very important things with this recipe. First of all, Hilary's Aunt Helen was a maven (Yiddish word for someone who really does know it all). I've made recipes simiilar to this in the past and never thought to leave the batter in the fridge overnight. It did make a world of difference. The second thing I learned is do not let the logs cool before you cut them otherwise they'll crack. That's a very important tip. I've had cracked mandelbrot and biscotti before but I can tell you it won't happen again. And the third tip and probably the most important one - go back to basics - use a wooden spoon to mix this with. The texture is so superior to that of using a hand or stand mixer. Go figure. All this modern technology and the simplest way in this case is the best.

Aunt Helen has certainly left one of her legacies in this household.