Recipe: Toll House Nestle's Chunky Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies

My mom bought me the Toll House Nestle's "3 Books in 1" more than 10 years ago, and it's my go-to cookbook for baking cookies. Over the holidays, I knew I wanted to make peanut butter cookies, and this recipe was a no-brainer.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (I probably used half a cup, whatever I already had left.)
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped peanuts (I used peanut butter chips instead.)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 F.
2. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Beat butter, both sugars, and peanut butter in a large mixing bowl until creamy. Beat in egg and vanilla extract. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stire in morsels and peanuts.
3. Drop dough by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets. Press down slightly to flatten into 1-inch circles.
4. Bake for 7-10 minute or until edges are set but centers are still soft. Cool on baking sheets for 4 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely. 

These cookies ended up being a lot bigger and more fragile than I expected. So I think I made them too big and underbaked them (for fear of having crunchy cookies, I'd rather them be too soft than too hard!). My scoop was probably bigger than a tablespoon, so that could have been the problem; our peanut butter is also very oily, so that might have made them spread more, too. Next time, I would make them smaller, and I'd make sure I saw some browning on the bottoms of all the cookies before taking them out of the oven. These still tasted delicious, but they broke apart so easily, so they didn't look as good as I would have hoped. Certainly worth trying again!

Recipe: Easy Pumpkin Pie

 

I have made many a pumpkin recipe (I love all things pumpkin!), but I wanted to try a pumpkin pie recipe that I had never made before. I found this recipe on the Cooking Classy blog, and with only six ingredients, I knew this would be a piece of cake... or pie rather ;)

Ingredients

• 1 (9-inch) refrigerated pie crust (store-bought)
• 1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree (not pie filling)
• 1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 large eggs
• 2 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1/4 tsp salt

Directions

1. Set oven rack in lowest position of oven and heat oven to 425° F.
2. Thaw the chilled pie crust according to package directions, unroll and then fit into pie dish. Decorate edges if desired.
3. In a mixing bowl whisk together pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk (scrape in any excess from can), eggs, pumpkin pie spice, and salt until well blended.
4. Pour mixture into pie crust then wiggle to level. Set on a baking sheet. If you don't want the crust edges to get overly dark you can cover them with a ring of aluminum foil.
5. Transfer pie on baking sheet to oven and bake on lowest rack in preheated oven 15 minutes. Leave in oven, reduce temperature to 350° F and continue to bake until pie is nearly set (filling no longer jiggles when moved), about 35 to 40 minutes.
6. Transfer to a wire rack and let pie cool at least 2 hours before slicing. For a chilled pie rest 1 hour at room temperature and then 2 hours in the fridge.

Unfortunately I did not actually have any pie crusts. My sister and mom went out shopping, and they only bought ONE box of pie crusts (2 crusts each) instead of TWO boxes, and I knew I had to use two pie crusts for the apple pie later (find that recipe here). So I used a Pillsbury dough sheet instead; since that cooks a lot faster, the edges of the crust burned almost immediately. I tried to salvage it but putting aluminum foil around the edges, but the damage has been done, and then the foil ended up tearing little holes at the top surface. So this pie (like my peanut butter cookies) did not look, but at least it tasted yummy! I usually make pumpkin pie with evaporated milk instead of condensed milk, so this version was creamier and thicker. I would certainly consider this a traditional pie, great for the holiday season!