The Year of the Snake, true to its nature, slithered in stealthily. Since I’ve been so busy lately, it almost caught me unaware, but I did manage to prepare a dinner on Sunday night comprised of four, that’s right, FOUR Chinese dishes to eat alongside rice. That’s a record for me. (I couldn’t have done it without help, of course.) (Thanks Chris.) (Afterwards, he and I reclined on the couch and watched Joy Luck Club, a fact I’m slightly embarrassed to admit, but I ended up being moved anyway. Sigh.)
Moving forward, Valentine’s Day is on Thursday! What?! When did mid-February creep up on us? The problem with the month is that it’s way too short, so that my birthday at the beginning of March always seems to strike suddenly and without notice. Yup. It’s official. Time speeds up the older you get.
Let’s not talk about this upcoming birthday anymore—I don’t want to be reminded that I’m careening through my late-20′s like a human cannonball. Instead, let’s shift the conversation over to cookies, chocolate cookies to be exact. (FYI: chocolate is an aphrodisiac, hint hint.)
Today’s recipe came to me courtesy of Carey, who blogged about these beauties not three weeks ago. She got the recipe from the Blue Bottle Coffee recipe book, which should be enough reason for you to make these, immediately.
If you do, however, use peanut butter chips like I did, the cookie’s name changes entirely. It can no longer technically be called Blue Bottle’s double chocolate cookie—maybe I’ll call it Blue Bottle’s Reese’s peanut butter cups cookies instead? But its nature remains very much the same—it’s a dense chocolatey cookie, crackly and chewy both at the same time. I love how the coarse salt punctuates the dough, like exclamation points in otherwise seductive prose. And did I mention that peanut butter is an aphrodisiac? Don’t quote me on that.
I will certainly have to make the official recipe soon, but for my Valentine, peanut butter chips are the way to go.
CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER CHIP COOKIES
Makes 8 four-inch cookies
From The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee via Reclaiming Provincial
Ingredients:
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1/3 cup of natural cocoa powder (not Dutch-process)
1/2 tsp baking soda
5 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp high-quality coarse salt (coarse is key)
1 egg, room temperature
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup peanut butter chips
Directions:
Sift together flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda into a medium bowl.
In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the butter on low until smooth, around 1–2 minutes. Add the sugar and salt and beat on low until well-combined. Scrape down the bowl, then beat at medium speed until the mixture becomes lighter in color and the texture becomes fluffier, around 5–6 minutes.
In another bowl, combine the eggs and vanilla extract and whisk vigorously until well blended. As soon as the vanilla hits the egg, begin whisking immediately. Most vanilla extracts are made with an alcohol base, and will curdle the egg if left to sit.
Slowly add the egg mixture in a steady stream to the bowl containing the butter, beating on medium speed until well-incorporated and very smooth, around 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and then mix on medium speed for another 30 seconds.
Scrape down sides of bowl, then add the flour mixture. Mix on low speed until uniform in texture. Scrape down the bowl again, then add the chopped chocolate. Mix on low speed until the color is a uniform brown and no streaks of white remain.
Using a rubber spatula, scrape the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap. Shape the dough into a rough disk, wrap tightly and refrigerate at least 3 hours and up to 5 days.
Preheat your oven to 350°. Line your baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Roll 1/4 cup portions of the dough into balls and place them on the baking sheet, spacing them at least 2 inches apart. Bake 11–12 minutes, until the cookies are slightly firm to the touch and the surface is no longer glossy, rotating the pan midway through the baking time. Let the cookies cool on the pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
Oh yes, this is awesome. I have an addiction to Reese’s peanut butter chips. I begrudgingly bought them for the first time a couple years ago for monster cookies because the natural foods market downtown doesn’t carry white chocolate chips. (Dumbest store ever.) I think I was expecting them to taste like compacted bits of peanut butter. But then I tried one when I got home and was delighted to discover that it tastes just like the inside of a peanut butter cup, which makes way more sense.
So yeah, this sounds pretty much tops! Johnny’s favorite food group is chocolate + peanut butter and he loved the Blue Bottle cookies, so I am totally going to make these for him for Valentine’s Day! Weee!
And mega props to you for busting out four CNY dishes! A friend of mine had a birthday party on Sunday, and I was toying with the idea of making dumplings or buns of some sort in the bamboo steamer I got for Christmas. But then I weenied out and made a pizza instead. (:
I’d take the pizza! I do love dumplings though, and Chinese food in general. The smell of garlic and ginger and scallions and sometimes cilantro is one of my favorites ever. I think I avoid cooking Chinese food too much so that every time that scent combination is wafting around in the kitchen, I cherish it. (Fine, and the fact that they all need to be prepped—I especially hate mincing, UGH)
These look like my kind of cookies – chocolaty, chewy, thick and added peanut butter chips? Wow. Happy Chinese New Year and an early happy birthday – do you have plans for an amazing cake?!
Thanks so much! I have no plans (yet) on making a cake as I’d sooner dig my head into the sand about my birthday coming up.
It’s so funny how aging-phobic we’ve become. I guess it feels like there’s so much left that I want to accomplish in my 20′s.
I love the idea of subbing peanut butter chips for chocolate. My boyfriend is not a huge fan of chocolate, but he loooooves peanut butter. So maybe I can use this to bribe him into letting me make chocolate cookies! These look awesome.
These look perfect, everything about them. This week is such a good excuse for baking sweet treats, isn’t it?
And I don’t know if this is a stereotype or something, but it seems like regular Chinese dinner meals always have 8 different dishes to share. I went to Jinan and Bejing a few years ago for a couple weeks, and I still have the image of my host mom making a lest 4 different dishes just for lunch on a random day ingrained in my memory. So impressive! So delicious!
Yes, we come up with as many occasions as we can to bake. I always think it’s so funny how Valentine’s Day falls so soon after New Year’s, giving everyone the chance to renege on their resolutions pretty early on (although I guess it depends on how you look at it. A month-and-a-half of eating healthily is pretty good already, isn’t it?).
And hahaha, it’s true! Meals usually consist of multiple dishes to be eaten family style. My mom used to make a soup and maybe two dishes and a stir-fried vegetable dish every night and it was considered a simple meal. I don’t know how she did it.
I saw these over at Carey’s and I am loving them over here too! They look tastier every time I look at them, great photos!
I have to make these!
Beautiful photos, as usual.
These look nice and soft just how I like my cookies
I bought a bag of peanutbutter chips when I was in the states in november, these are just the thing I saved them for! In Sweden, actually finding chocolate chips is pretty new so i suppose I will have to wait quite some time to o see peanutbutter chips around here:) So the single bag of peanutbutter chips need to be used only for really good recipes! Thanks!
I have that cookbook…where have I been…because I never saw that recipe in there! And they look amazing. I am a huge fan of PB + chocolate. Gorgeous pics…found you from either TS or FG!
These look so delicious! “Crackly and chewy both at the same time” is basically the perfect description of the perfect cookie to me.
Damn, posts like these make me wish I were still in NY so I could eat a bunch of them and then yap on and on about how great they are while watching movies at your apartment.
Mouthwateringly beautiful photos, as per ushe.
Ohhhh by golly, these cookies look perfect! Nice crispy outside and rich and chewy in the middle. I LOVE peanut butter and have never used peanut butter chips. Definitely a must try recipe!
Lovely lovely photos! I adore the chiaroscuro style! Looks deliciously artistic!
Thanks so much!
yum! these look incredible!
Seriously, the Blue Bottle Recipe book is such a gem! I keep rechecking it out from the library. I need to just go buy a copy already!
Haha, I don’t own the book either. I got the recipe from Carey, who does own it. Does that mean I can say I own it transitively?