Continuing my steady march through Baked, I tried the recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chunks on Monday. This recipe specifically calls for milk chocolate and includes an admonishment not to replace the milk chocolate chunks with semisweet chips. I am generally not a fan of milk chocolate, but I played along and used Guittard milk chocolate chips (I didn't have any milk chocolate bars to cut into chunks). The recipe instructions call for the dough (made with flour, baking soda, salt, butter, sugar, dark brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, creamy peanut butter, and milk chocolate) to be chilled for at least 3 hours before the dough is formed into balls, flattened slightly, sprinkled with sugar, and baked.
After all of the time the batter spent chilling, the cookies kept their shape well during baking. They came out of the oven round, golden brown, and fairly flat, looking a lot like old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies. They also had a nice soft texture, which is particularly nice given that peanut butter cookies can sometimes be a bit dry. However, their soft texture caused me a near anxiety attack the next day. It's been very humid this week, and when I left the cookies out on cooling racks on the kitchen counter overnight, the following morning they had turned into a horrifying scene straight out of the Salvador Dali painting. Any part of a cookie that was hanging off the edge of a rack had drooped and broken off completely. I panicked that my floppy cookies were not going to be salvageable. Fortunately, after some recuperation time in the refrigerator, the cookies regained their structural integrity and I felt okay taking them in to the office.
I thought this cookie was fine, but it could definitely use some improvement. First, I didn't think that the peanut butter flavor was pronounced enough. Next time I might try chunky peanut butter to see if that gives the peanut flavor a bit of a boost. I also thought that the chocolate flavor wasn't strong enough -- the milk chocolate was so mild that it was barely detectable. The recipe only called for 6 oz. of milk chocolate, which I didn't think was enough. I might go ahead and disregard the instruction not to use semisweet chips instead next time, or at the very least, I would use a lot more milk chocolate.
Recipe: "Peanut Butter Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chunks" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.
After all of the time the batter spent chilling, the cookies kept their shape well during baking. They came out of the oven round, golden brown, and fairly flat, looking a lot like old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies. They also had a nice soft texture, which is particularly nice given that peanut butter cookies can sometimes be a bit dry. However, their soft texture caused me a near anxiety attack the next day. It's been very humid this week, and when I left the cookies out on cooling racks on the kitchen counter overnight, the following morning they had turned into a horrifying scene straight out of the Salvador Dali painting. Any part of a cookie that was hanging off the edge of a rack had drooped and broken off completely. I panicked that my floppy cookies were not going to be salvageable. Fortunately, after some recuperation time in the refrigerator, the cookies regained their structural integrity and I felt okay taking them in to the office.I thought this cookie was fine, but it could definitely use some improvement. First, I didn't think that the peanut butter flavor was pronounced enough. Next time I might try chunky peanut butter to see if that gives the peanut flavor a bit of a boost. I also thought that the chocolate flavor wasn't strong enough -- the milk chocolate was so mild that it was barely detectable. The recipe only called for 6 oz. of milk chocolate, which I didn't think was enough. I might go ahead and disregard the instruction not to use semisweet chips instead next time, or at the very least, I would use a lot more milk chocolate.
Recipe: "Peanut Butter Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chunks" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.
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