Peanut Butter Filled Chocolate Cookies

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Multicultural Inspiration from... America

You know that food you absolutely must have after those big nights out? Those nights where you maybe have a bit too much to drink, not enough to eat, stay out wayyy too late, and get home only to realise that your driver has somehow by-passed Maccas and now you need to find that food to round out the night and help you get a decent sleep? Well, mine is toast. With crunchy peanut butter. Nutella too, if there's any in the house.

 

So I have a radical idea. A chocolate cookie. With peanut butter filling. Like a baked version of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Sous-Jeff is excited. So is the Kitchen Bug (although he's not really sure what he's excited about exactly, he just knows that people in the kitchen is always a good sign). I quickly Google peanut butter filled cookies, as I'm not really sure how to tackle the peanut butter filling, and find a stack of recipes. Some advocate mixing the peanut butter for the filling with flour, others recommend corn flour, others still suggest castor sugar. A few recipes advise the addition of icing sugar; that's that one that grabs me the most. My intuition says that the saltiness of the peanut butter would benefit from the sweetness of the icing sugar, toning it down a little and making it more cookie friendly. So, I whip out my 1 Dough, 100 Cookies book for my fail safe chocolate cookie recipe, recruit Sous-Jeff, and here's how it's done...

First, to make the filling, spoon three quarters of a 375g jar of crunchy peanut butter into a bowl and microwave for 15 - 20 seconds. Then, add 3 tsp of icing sugar, mix to combine, and refrigerate until ready to use.

For the cookies,

• 225g butter, softened
• 140g castor sugar
• 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 225g plain flour
• 70g cocoa powder

 Preheat your oven to 190°C and line 2 baking trays with baking paper.


Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon. Then, beat in the egg yolk and vanilla extract. Sift together the flour and cocoa, then mix in thoroughly until combined.

Next comes the hard part - putting them together. Scoop out a tablespoon-sized ball of dough, and gently flatten it on the baking paper.

 

Take the peanut butter mixture out of the fridge, and spoon a little bit (about a teaspoon worth) into the middle of the flattened dough.

 

Next up, gently cover the peanut butter ball with the cookie dough, ensuring you cover the peanut butter completely, carefully smoothing the dough over.

 

This is a little tricky and time consuming - it works best if you wash and completely dry your hands in between every few cookies. Once that's done, into the oven they go, for 15 minutes.

In they go...

... and out they come!

 Warning: the smell of warm cocoa and peanut butter wafting through the air is damn near impossible to resist, but it's best to leave them to cool on their tray for 10 minutes or so. Then, get involved!

 The chocolatey cocoa hits you first, they the stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth gooeyness of the peanut butter... just really, really yummy! Also had one very, very happy friend who was visiting from Hepburn Springs, who went home with a box full of these bad boys. Next time I'm planning a big night out, I'll be sure to have a batch of these on stand by! 

So, what are your favourite post-big-night-out comfort foods?!