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Peanut Butter Cookies
By Susan | December 17, 2008
I went ahead and bought myself a Christmas gift this weekend, and while I watch the UPS tracking info as it makes its way closer to my front door, I’ll distract myself by posting about my weekend adventures with baking.
Baking! Me! Anyone who knows me knows I am not very comfortable in a kitchen. I love to eat, don’t get me wrong, but I’m impatient. I don’t understand the need or desire to spend hours creating a masterpiece of fine cooking which will be eaten up in less than 10 minutes. It does not compute in my over-rational brain.
(Let me give a huge shout-out to Mr. Martini, because without his cooking skills we might just live on nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches and frozen pizza.)
However, I was called upon to make something for a bake sale we held at work to benefit a local chapter of Big Brothers/Big Sisters. I didn’t feel right just buying cookie dough in a tube and trying to sell it off to my unsuspecting co-workers, so I decided to bake some cookies. From scratch.
I can’t believe it either. I also can’t believe how much FUN it was.
When we moved down from Chicago to Louisville, we hadn’t really stocked up on the basic supplies needed to bake things. Mr. Martini, an excellent cook, isn’t a baker. With my handy recipe in hand, I headed out to the local Kroger’s and purchased everything I needed, right down to the flour and baking soda and vanilla. Here we are halfway through the process:
I had to stir these the old-fashioned way (wooden spoon) because I couldn’t find my hand mixer. I did, of course, find it when I was putting away the cookie sheets after the entire process was complete. Figures.
I loved the recipe I found online, because it used the WHOLE JAR of peanut butter. The cookies ended up super-peanuty and rich. Very tasty.
The bake sale was a huge success. We raised about $100 – not bad!
It was hard to resist spending all of my cash on some of the amazing goodies people brought in. Especially the hand-made “Bourbon Balls,” a delicious pecan & bourbon candy covered in chocolate (a local favorite, since I live in Kentucky now, after all).
It was only after I was done with the cookies I realized I had completed something off of my 101 in 1001 list: #5, Bake something from scratch. I say that one is complete!
Also, I just checked, and my UPS package is “out for delivery.” Woo-hoo!
Topics: Baking, In the Kitchen | 2 Comments »
December 17th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Woohoo! Next time, you should totally try using the all natural peanut butter for the cookies (I like the Trader Joe’s version, personally) – it’ll make them super-peanutty and delicious.
January 8th, 2009 at 9:42 am
[...] program. I was thrilled to be able to participate to raise money for such a great cause. Remember the bake sale I made the peanut butter cookies for a few weeks back? It just one of several events we have [...]