Lovin' From the Oven

Cherie’s Snickers Peanut Butter Cookies

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I honestly don’t know how people go to work 40 hours a week. We work to live, live to work. It’s a strenuous lifestyle that can also be just as rewarding. For me, I feel like I have to go on a mini vacation every month just to keep from overloading.. and I don’t even consider my job “real” work (since it’s just a part time job)! What am I going to do once I join the work force?! Oh dear. Hopefully I’m lucky enough to do something that I love so it doesn’t feel like work.

I’ll be taking my second mini vacation this week with another trip to Vegas, but this time it’s a girls’ trip with my mom, my aunt (mom’s sister) and her daughter (aka my cousin). We’ll be celebrating my aunt’s and my birthday! I’m counting down the hours… so excited!

I feel like I made these cookies oh-so-long ago. But don’t these cookies just look drool-worthy? After baking these, I confirmed that I don’t like peanut butter cookies. Am I crazy? I love having peanut butter chips and candy in cookies, but I don’t like peanut butter cookies itself. Either way, my DB loved these. The cookies are very moist, almost to the post where they’re crumbly, and have a different kick depending on what type of candy bar you use. I got a grab bag that had the three musketeers, milky way, snickers, and midnight milky way. The recipe is slightly adapted from Amanda’s Cookin’.

Oh, I’ve actually been updating my style blog, A Pile of Style, frequently! Feel free to drop by over there and say hello! 🙂

  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar, packed
  • 1 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 ½ cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 bag mini size candy bars, whatever you prefer
  1. Preheat oven to 325 F.
  2. Cream butter, sugars and peanut butter. Add eggs. Stir or whisk together flour, soda and salt. Add to creamed butter mixture and mix well.
  3. Roll into balls or use a cookie scoop.
  4. Cut the candy bars in half and place them cut side down on top of the rounded cookie and press down gently.
  5. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.
  6. Remove from oven and leave cookies on cookie sheet for 2 minutes to rest. Cool on a cooling rack for ten minutes.
  7. Allow to cool completely before eating (if you can wait!).

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Chocolate Toffee Cookies

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I just got home from Vegas and I can’t wait for a little R&R. Weird, right? You shouldn’t need R&R coming home from vacation, but this trip was just the opposite. We walked at least 3 miles a day in 110 degree weather, ate our weight in the 24 hour buffet, stayed out until 3 AM every night, and battled our way through outlandish crowds. Usually, people go to Vegas for the clubs, drinking, and gambling, but for me, it’s all about the food and shopping! You don’t need to be an alcoholic party animal to enjoy Vegas.

As much fun as my trip was, I’m glad to be back at home watching “Trick ‘R Treat” with my DB. Yes, I’ve talked about before how my guilty pleasures consist of bad scary movies, so this is a perfect way to end the weekend for me.

These cookies come from the Culinary Chronicles. My DB loved them, but that’s probably cause there’s toffee in them and he’s a sucker for toffee. They were really chewy and I would recommend baking them for longer than I did. These definitely are fragile cookies, so be careful if you’re going to travel with them. They’re also very chocolate-y, so if you’re not a fan of chocolate cookies, stay away!

  • ½ Cup All Purpose Flour
  • 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
  • ¼ Teaspoon Salt
  • 16 Ounces Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
  • ¼ Cup Unsalted Butter, room temperature
  • 1¾ Cups Light Brown Sugar
  • 4 Large Eggs, room temperature
  • 1 Tablespoon Vanilla Extract
  • 8 Ounces Coarsely Chopped Toffee Bars
  1. Preheat oven to 350° degrees.
  2. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Combine chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl. Melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave using 20-second intervals, stirring in between each period. Continue until the mixture is melted and smooth—about 100 seconds, depending on the oven. Do this slowly and carefully as to not scorch the chocolate. Cool mixture to lukewarm.
  3. Beat sugar and eggs in bowl until thick, about 5 minutes. Beat in chocolate mixture and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture and then toffee. Chill batter until firm but not hard, about 30 minutes.
  4. Using a large scooper, about 1/4 cup, place dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing the cookies 2½ inches apart. Bake just until tops are dry and cracked but cookies are still soft to touch, about 15 minutes. Cool on sheets.

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Dark Chocolate & Almond Cookies

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When I was little, I used to be allergic to chocolate. Crazy, right? How could anyone be allergic to such a divine substance? Whenever I ate chocolate, I got a nosebleed momentarily after. It was weird because all of my siblings were the same way; chocolate equals nosebleed. Of course, that never stopped us from eating Crunch ice cream bars or nibbling a bit of chocolate every now and then. It just meant that we had to be prepared later on with wads of tissues and a comfortable place to sit down.

I actually got so many nosebleeds in elementary school that I became BFFs with the nurse, Barbara. She was the sweetest little lady and knew me by name. She always knew to grab the ice pack and tons of tissues the moment she saw me walking through the door. Why did this happen? I’ll never know. All I know is that I eventually grew out of it and was able to eat all the chocolate in the world without a worry. Thank goodness!

This recipe is adapted from pixie baker and I’d say it’s a good base for a cookie. I’ve come to the conclusion that baking cookies with bread flour is my favorite way to make cookies. It always results in a firm and chewy cookie. I used 72% dark chocolate, but that may have been a bit much for some people, so feel free to use whatever kind of chocolate you want!

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter, at room temp.
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3 cups Bread flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking Soda
  • 1 1/3 cups dark or bittersweet chocolate chips (I used Trader Joe’s Pound Plus Dark Chocolate Bar)
  • 1 to 1 1/3 cups coarsely chopped almonds
  1. In a large bowl, cream butter and both sugars just until they come together. Add the egg and vanilla extract, beat just until incorporated. In a seperate medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking soda. When thoroughly mixed, add to batter and stir just until blended. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts. The dough should be neither sticky nor dry. Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for at least two hours.
  2. Preheat oven to 350.
  3. Form the cookie dough into balls.
  4. Place the cookies on an ungreased insulated cookie sheet or an upside down rimmed cookie sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool on cookie sheet for five minutes before removing.

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