A Small Batch of Giant Cookies: Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love the idea of small batch recipes, but because I typically bake in large quantities, I rarely ever make just a single batch of a small batch recipe. Erin Clarkson's Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies looked like a small batch recipe at first glance, because the stated yield is only 12 cookies. But the quantities in the ingredient list certainly didn't look like a small batch -- 320 grams of flour, 200 grams of butter, and 325 grams of chocolate. I decided to double the recipe.

Clarkson is originally from New Zealand and wrote the recipe to use Fix & Fogg Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter. I've been a fan of New Zealand-based Fix & Fogg for a few years now -- my personal favorite is the Everything Butter. (And by the way, I've noticed that New Zealand companies do a good job of promoting each other. I learned about Clarkson and her blog Cloudy Kitchen from Heilala Vanilla, which is based in NZ. And I first learned about Fix & Fogg from Blunt Umbrellas, also based in NZ.) But I didn't have any Fix & Fogg Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter and didn't want to go through the hassle of ordering some; even though Fix & Fogg is available at Whole Foods and our local Streets Market, both stores offer a limited flavor range that doesn't include Dark Chocolate. So I used Peanut Butter & Co. Dark Chocolatey Dreams instead, since I can purchase it at any grocery store. 

The first step is to scoop out blobs of the chocolate peanut butter onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, and stick the sheet in the freezer. I used a #60 scoop and each portion weighed a little over 20 grams. While the peanut butter was in the freezer, I made the dough. You cream softened butter with granulated sugar and dark brown sugar until light and fluffy; add egg and vanilla; mix in flour, baking powder, baking soda, and kosher salt; and incorporate the chocolate. I was very low on dark chocolate couverture when I made these cookies and so I used a mix of other options I had on hand: chopped Ghiradelli Intense Dark 72% bars, Godiva 69% bittersweet chips, and Ghiradelli 60% bittersweet chips.

 

I portioned out the dough with a #30 scoop and flattened each piece into a disc. Then I sandwiched each blob of frozen chocolate peanut butter between two discs of dough and sealed the dough shut around it. My double batch yielded 29 cookies. I sprinkled them with Maldon salt right after taking them out of the oven.

I got great results from my mix of chocolates. The chopped Ghiraelli bars melted into irregular blobs, which I quite liked. And the two different types of chips, which were different sizes since the Ghiradelli chips are extra large, added visual interest and flavor variety. The cookies were massive. They were 4.5-inches in diameter and weighed in at almost 100 grams each.

The cookies had a clearly defined core of chocolate peanut butter in the middle. Because there is so much chocolate in the cookie already, I think regular peanut butter (creamy or crunchy) would work just as well -- although I'm not sure if a commercial brand like Skippy or Jif would do, as they have a significantly different texture compared to natural brands like Fix & Fogg. This cookie was very satisfying and super decadent. The huge size compelled me to always share a cookie instead of eating one whole. This small batch recipe creates ginormous cookies with big flavors.

Recipe: "Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies" from Erin Clarkson of Cloudy Kitchen.