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Sunday, January 25, 2009

Chunky Peanut Butter & Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters


My first memory of peanuts was when I was around 8 years old (it is no exaggeration to say that most of my childhood memories are snippets of events associated with foods). My father was back to Bangkok from a short term assignment out of town, and as usual it was a happy occasion for my sister and me. One day the three of us were walking on a neighborhood street and my father bought a bag of boiled peanuts in shells. They were wrapped in cones made with newspapers. I remember specifically thinking that out of all the things there were to eat, my father chose to buy these boiled peanuts.

The way one (I) would eat would be take a piece, pinch the tip and the two sides of the shells would easily be split apart, leaving the peanuts on one side of the shell or the other. The skin of the peanuts would be brownish purple. I would then sink my front teeth on a piece. Yum. Walking the streets and working these peanuts with my father and sister were such a carefree thing to do! And my father must have been right about the peanuts out of all the foods, because I still remember this peanut moment to this day.

I love and eat a lot of seeds and nuts, in particular peanuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds and pistachios. When I started becoming a vegetarian in my first year at the university, I still wasn't eating vegetables (yes, I know, what kind of vegetarian is that?) and my diet for about half a year consisted mostly of peanuts and brownies. Yes... I cringe thinking about that now!

Yesterday I wanted to make peanut butter cookies and decided to go with Dorie Greenspan's chunky peanut butter & oatmeal chocolate chipsters. I used smooth PB because that's what I had. They were very good, specially when they were freshly out of the oven, but lost the soft chewiness the next day. They taste a lot like my regular chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. So I am going to try a more traditional peanut butter cookie recipe next time.


Chunky Peanut Butter & Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters Recipe



Ingredients :
3 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Directions :
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Combine the oats, flour, baking soda, spices and salt.
3. Beat together the butter, peanut butter, sugar and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs and the vanilla.
4. Beat only until blend the dry ingredients
5. Mix in the chocolate chips.
6. Chill the dough for 2 hours+.
7. Form into 1" balls, placing on ungreased non-stick cookie sheet and flattening with palm of hand.
8. Bake for 13-15 minutes until done.

Bon appetit!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I confirm, the cookies were very good, especially when it just came out the oven. Yummy yummy
Y.

test it comm said...

Those cookies look really good!

Taylor said...

Wow, these were great! They really expanded in the oven, and had that great crakely top I like! The only big change I made was taking out a cup of the oatmeal and adding a cup of flour, because I ran out of oatmeal. YUM

Yannick said...

Tu m'avais promis un nouveau post sur ton blog ... et toujours rien :(
Alors que tu as fait un super flan !