The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2012: Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl Cookies

I may have mentioned before, but I participated in The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap again this year.  Such fun!  So, I'm delaying What I Ate Wednesday until later today, so I can tell you all about this!

source

The way it works is if you have a blog, you sign up with the swap and they send you 3 matches.  You kind of keep it on the downlow for a bit.  Then you send your 3 matches a dozen cookies each.  There are a ton of participants and it is all across the U.S.

You will also receive a dozen cookies from 3 other bloggers, as well.  That's the fun part!  You get to sample someone else's cookies and share them with family and friends.

Then, everyone posts their recipes and we all link up to like a gazillion other recipes.  It's fun to browse through there and see what everyone comes up with.

This year proceeds go to Cookies for Kids' Cancer and they sent me an awesome cookie spatula!  Yay :)

So, for my recipe this year, I had one combination on my mind: peanut butter and chocolate.  I figured  I should swirl them together for maximum enjoyment.

This recipe makes a TON of cookies...so you might want to scale it down if you are not feeding a small army.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl Cookies

makes 5-6 dozen (for real)

Chocolate Cookie Dough

12 tablespoons butter, melted

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Beat melted butter with brown sugar and granulated sugar until smooth. Cool slightly and beat in egg and egg yolk. Beat in vanilla.

Combine the flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda. Slowly beat into the butter and sugar mixture until well blended. 

Roll out the dough on plastic wrap that has been sprayed with oil until it makes a giant rectangle the size of your baking sheet.  No actual measurements from this gal!

Make your peanut butter dough.

Peanut Butter Cookie Dough

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

1 1/2 cups peanut butter

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

5 cups all-purpose flour

Combine butter, peanut butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla.  Add flour, baking soda and salt. 

Plop about 2/3 of the dough on top of the rolled out chocolate dough and roll it over it until even and smooth.  You will have extra peanut butter cookie dough (you're welcome), so you can make those, too or freeze the dough.

Roll the plastic wrap up a bit and use it as a guide to carefully roll your two doughs into a giant log.  I had to actually cut down the middle and separate the cookie logs, because they were so large.  Refrigerate dough for about 30 minutes.  

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and slice your cookies into about 1/4" slices.

Lay on parchment paper and bake for 11-12 minutes.  Cool on a cookie rack.

Chocolate cookie dough recipe adapted from About.com

Peanut butter cookie dough recipe adapted from All Recipes

cookies all ready to go to my recipients ;)

I love participating in this online cookie swap and meeting other bloggers!  So fun :)

Thanks so much to Love & Olive Oil and The Little Kitchen for hosting!

Also, I gotta give a shout out to the awesome bloggers whose cookies I received:

Amber from Caleigh's Kitchen made some killer chocolate buckeye cookies.  Holy moly.

Mal from The Chic Geek sent me some scrumptious cinnamon roll palmiers :)

My third cookie shipper got delayed, because she had the flu.  That's no fun :(  I'll update this once I receive hers.

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My cookies from last year's swap: Crispy Coconut Almond Cookies

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap

It's finally time to reveal my recipe for the cookie swap!

I sent packs of these cookies to three fellow bloggy ladies. I hope they liked them!



I modified two recipes that I've used in the past to create a crazy yummy confection of goodness. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was when the recipe made 3 1/2 dozen instead of just 3 dozen--that means I got to keep 6 cookies for me!



So here's my recipe.

Crispy Coconut Almond Cookies
a conglomeration of this recipe and this recipe

2 sticks of butter
1 cup of sugar
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 tbsp almond extract
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups flour
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup finely chopped, cocoa dusted almonds
3/4 cup toasted shredded unsweetened coconut flakes

First things first, toast your coconut. I used this lovely tutorial from Baking Bites.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare your cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Heat 1 1/2 sticks of butter in a small pan on the stove (on medium heat) until bubbly, whisking occasionally. Once it starts to take on a brown color, remove from the stove. OMG, you just made browned butter! You are awesome.

While you are working on browning butter, put remaining butter and sugars in a large bowl.

Pour the browned butter in a bowl and cream it all together. It will look like a Coke slushie. Just go with it.

Add your eggs (and the yolk) one at a time and whisk. Then whisk in your extracts.

Mix your flour, salt and baking soda in a separate bowl then add slowly to your sugar, butter mixture and combine.

Stir in your chocolate chips, chopped almonds and toasted coconut.

Try not to eat too much batter. This is a serious warning, because this is the kind of batter you would risk eating raw egg for. It's that good.

Scoop your cookie batter onto the parchment using a standard cookie scoop.

Bake your cookies in batches for about 12-15 minutes and cool on a rack.



You could also do a nice chocolate drizzle and sprinkle of toasted coconut to the top, but I had to get these packed up in a hurry. Not because I was behind on a deadline, but because I did not want to eat them all.



Many thanks to the bloggers who sent me cookies, too!
Monique from Ambitious Kitchen sent me some delicious peanut butter cookies with a Rolo baked in the middle.
Hannah from Fleur-De-Licious sent some yummy cherry-walnut Rugelach cookies.
And I just got some awesome fruit and nut cookies from Amy + Janesse at Two True Foodies.

Fabulous Fall Fridays: Zucchini Chili

Well, the weather has definitely been getting chilly (pun intended) in our neck of the woods this past week. We even had snow. In November. Seriously.

So, with that in mind I had to change my kitchen chalkboard (painted with chalkboard paint) to a more appropriate theme (it was fall leaves).



Then, I had to make chili. Which is sort of like a soup, I guess. Helping my transition into the inevitable crossover to soup blog. All soup all the time.

No, I'm just being silly. Speaking of silly, my husband kind of gripes about the fact that I throw icky vegetables in basically everything I cook. So I threw in the zucchini on purpose. To mess with him.

I guess the joke's on me, because this is some dang good chili :)
We both enjoyed it thoroughly and it is a great, quick weeknight meal.

Renee's Zucchini Chili

1 lb lean ground meat (I used 93% lean ground sirloin)
chili seasoning packet
can of mild chili beans
1/4-1/2 onion, diced
1-2 zucchini, diced
1/2 cup spaghetti sauce
1/4-1/2 cup broth (I used 1/4 c beef broth-it depends on how thick you want it)
1 clove garlic
seasoning blend (I used this one)

Put some water (or oil) in the bottom of your soup pan (just enough to coat the bottom of the pan to prevent sticking) and throw in the meat to brown. After it is halfway browned, throw in the garlic and onion and cook until meat is brown. Add your chili seasoning packet, then scootch the meat over to one side. Add the zucchini to the opposite side to cook for a bit. Season with seasoning blend (mine has a bit of a kick, which was welcome here). After about 5 minutes, stir everything together, add the spaghetti sauce and broth and simmer on low for about 20 minutes or until awesome.



In other news, my cookies for the cookie blog swap are going out today! I'm really excited about them.



I made a cutie pie little bottle cap snowman ornament for each recipient, too. Inspired by What I Live For blog.

If you are interested in making one, I hot glued 3 bottle caps together (and a piece of yarn to hang), painted the inside white (they were kind of greyish in the middle) and then Sharpied on the eyes, nose, mouth and buttons.



The cookie has the incredible trifecta of browned butter, toasted coconut and cocoa dusted almonds. They are currently my obsession.

Recipe will be posted right here on this blog on December 12th. Mark your calendars ;)



Have a great weekend, everyone!