Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

I wanted to do an easier thing this week so I just made cookies, they aren't from my usual recipe book.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 2/3 cups peanut butter chips

Directions:

Gather ingredients.

Heat oven to 350

Stir together flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with mixer until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, beat well. gradually add flour mixture, beating well, stir in (by hand) chips. Make sure the butter is softened, it will make everything much much easier.

Drop rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. This makes a lot of cookies.

Bake 8 to 9 minutes. Cool slightly. Remove from sheet onto wire rack. Cool completely. Don't over bake the cookies or else they wont be chewy.

My Experience.

This was easy for me, I have made these cookies plenty of times before. They turned out a little different though. Usually they flatten, but this time they stayed perfectly round. I don't know what happened, but they turned out like that. Very easy recipe, but be careful it makes A LOT of cookies. around 4 1/2 dozen cookies.

Enjoy!xx

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

So I was involved in a secret Santa and I thought that Chocolate dipped strawberries would be a cool gift to give! This is not a recipe from the book I usually get recipes from, but yeah.

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces of semi sweet chocolate, chopped
• 3 ounces of white chocolate
• 1 pound of strawberries with stems, washed and dried very well.
• Various toppings, sprinkles, chopped nuts, ect.

Directions:

Put the semisweet and white chocolates into two separate heat proof medium bowls.

Fill two medium saucepans with 1-2 inches of water and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Turn off heat, set the bowls of chocolate over the water to melt. Stir until smooth. The chocolate may take a little while to melt. 

Once the chocolates are melted and smooth, remove from heat. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper or wax paper. Holding the strawberry by the stem dip the fruit into the semisweet chocolate or white chocolate, lift and twist lightly, letting any access chocolate fall back into the bowl. Set the strawberry on the parchment paper. Repeat with the rest of the strawberries, drizzle chocolate over them, sprinkle nuts, sprinkles, or other various things on the strawberries. This part was a lot of fun because you really get to be creative here.

My Experience:

I wanted to be more creative with my secret Santa gift rather than buying some cheep dollar store bits and bobs. This turned out to be such a great gift! It was very simple to do. I refrigerated my strawberries because I wanted them to stay hardened until the next morning. I had a lot of fun making these, it was quick and easy! The original recipe doesn't call for any of the nuts or sprinkles that I put in there. I wanted to have them be more creative. 

Enjoy!xx