Peanut Butter Slices

Last night, I had my dad over for dinner so he could see where I lived finally, and spend some quality time. (Major dad guilt trips going on lately) Originally I had only planned on cooking dinner, but I of course started to feel the sneaky obligation to bake desert as well.

I hadn't really planned on baking, so I did a quick baking supply inventory and decided to whip up some peanut butter treats. I LOVED these. Actually I loved them so much that I sent all the leftovers to work with Joe so I wouldn't devour them all. I'm already regretting it ;)

Ingredients:

2 ounces baking chocolate

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/3 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups flour

First off, melt the baking chocolate slowly over low heat until completely liquid. Set aside and let cool.

Blend together the butter and peanut butter with an electric mixer. add in the two sugars and blend some more. scrape down the sides of the bowl in between to make sure everything mixes evenly. Add in the vanilla and egg, mix until well blended.

Add in the remaining ingredients, adding the flour slowly, until you get an even, gooey dough :)

Split the dough in half. Add the melted chocolate to one half of the dough and mix as thoroughly as possible. I still had a little bit of marbling in the dough, but I was OK with it :)

Form the dough into two equally sized balls, and then lightly flour a counter or rolling surface. Shape each ball into a 10 inch log. Refrigerate the logs for 1 hour. Preferably next to some leftover chinese (I kid I kid).

After an hour in the fridge, take out the logs and try to roll them into circular shapes again. mine weren't exactly circles but, they were close enough. Slice each log lengthwise down the middle.

Then, stack half of a PB log, and half of a chocolate log on top of each other, and press them together. roll it around a little bit to make sure the dough bonds together, then reshape the log into its cylindrical shape.

Refrigerate for at least another hour. I actually refrigerated these overnight and it worked out great. These are a great "make-beforehand" kind of cookie, since you Can just bake them quickly right before your event etc. I'm also pretty sure you could freeze these logs, and save them for a rainy day. (cuz who doesn't love a cookie on a rainy day?)

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Once your logs are chilled, grab a sturdy sharp knife, and cut 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch slices off the log. Careful to keep your slices straight up and down, as it's pretty easy to get weirdly diagonal slices, which will not bake evenly. Be sure to sample some of the dough in this process. It's very yummy.

Place the cookies on 2 parchment lined baking sheets. They will not spread out that much, so you can put them 12 inch apart r so. This recipe makes a lot of cookies. I got abut 50 out of it.

Bake at 375 for 8 minutes until outsides start to brown. remove and cool on a baking rack.

These are yummy, melt in your mouth treats. I'm a big fan. Looking forward to feedback from the other taste testers!

Happy Baking :)