Happiness Is A Warm Cookie

Happiness is a warm cookie. Or more specifically (see the little red-shirt on the top right), happiness is standing on a warm and still-melty chocolate chip! Warms up chilly toes quite nicely!

Recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies:
2 cups peanut butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
a dash of salt
half a bag of chocolate chips (my husband prefers the dark chocolate, or semi-sweet)

Yield: about 3 to 4 dozen cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix sugar and peanut butter. Add eggs, stirring in one at a time. Add and stir in rest of ingredients.

Roll into small balls and flatten them a bit on the cookie sheet. You can press a fork down on top to create that criss-cross peanut butter cookie look that people love, or don't bother if you don't feel like it. Place slightly flattened cookie dough balls on cookie sheet a few inches apart. Bake 8 to 10 minutes.

I've found that baking them 8 and a half minutes works just about perfectly in our oven. The trick to keeping them moist is to remove the cookies just before they look completely done, while they are still inflated and soft looking. When cooled, they will deflate and turn into cookies looking like this, very moist and tasty and soft.

When you remove the cookie sheet from the oven, let the cookies cool on the sheet for 5 minutes before removing them to a cooling rack.

Serving suggestions: Enjoy a few with a nice cold glass of milk or hot cup of cocoa, or crumble a cookie or two into your favorite flavor of ice cream (I might suggest vanilla, chocolate, or peanut butter) and top it with chocolate and/or peanut butter sauce!

The song: It's really all about the sugar, isn't it? So the tune is: Def Leppard, Pour Some Sugar On Me.

For the cookie lovers, prior cookie Blips:

Happy cookies
Peanut butter cookies: the conversation
If you give a squirrel a cookie . . .