Peanut Butter Middles

I've been meaning to post this yummy cookie recipe since Christmas time. I found it in a Betty Crocker magazine called 100 Best Cookies. It's gooey peanut butter inside of a chocolate cookie, dusted with powdered sugar. Yum!


Ingredients:

Chocolate Cookie

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2   cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2   teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, softened 
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1   egg
1   tablespoon milk
1   teaspoon vanilla

Peanut Butter Middle

3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter


Instructions:
1. In a medium bowl stir together flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda; set aside.
2. In a large bowl (or Kitchen Aide) combine butter and 1/4 cup peanut butter. Beat on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add the white and brown sugar. Beat until combined, scraping side of bowl occasionally. Beat in egg, milk, and vanilla until combined. Beat in the flour mixture (if using a hand mixer, add as much as you can with mixer and finish with a wooden spoon). Shape into 32 balls.
**If you have a food scale, weight the balls. The chocolate balls weigh about 21-22 grams, and the peanut butter balls weight about 7-8 grams. I start by weighing the entire ball of dough and dividing in halves until I have 32 balls. 

3. In a small bowl combine powdered sugar and the 1/2 cup peanut butter. Beat until smooth, kneading by hand if necessary. Shape into 32 balls.**


4. For each cookie, flatten a chocolate dough ball; top with a peanut butter ball. Shape dough around peanut butter ball to enclose.

Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. (I use a Silpat). Flatten with spatula or a glass.

5. Bake at 350 F for 8 minutes or just until set and surfaces are slightly cracked. Cool for 1-2 minutes on cookie sheet and remove.


6. Dust with powdered sugar.

7. ENJOY!

Lake Powell...ROCKS

Last week I got toasted (by the sun) in Lake Powell with the Mattsons and the Watkins. 

The Mattsons - Carly, Rand, Cynthia, and Whitney

The Watkins - Camden, Lori, and Brooklyn 

Seriously...my skin sun had not seen sun since my last vacations with the Mattsons in May 2010 to Hawaii. Texas is SO hot - it actually deters me from getting sun in the summer. This is likely good skin cancer prevention, but unfortunately it also prevents me from doing fun, outdoor activities. I find my favorite Texas summertime activities include watching mind-numbingly stupid reality TV (SYTYCD, Project Runway, and Bachelor Pad...shamefully) and eating gelato or Blue Bell. Kind of sad, I know. But the good news is there are still some places in the USA that are comfortable (and beautiful) during the summer. 
LAKE POWELL may be the winner. I'm not extremely well-traveled, but who needs Martha's Vineyard or West Coast beaches when Lake Powell has cleaner water, no sharks, and fewer tools? Not me. 


A HUGE thanks to the Mattsons for inviting me this year. I tried to make myself useful be killing as many flies and spiders as I could reach. Truthfully, I was grateful that I was too short to get the ones on the ceiling. I found this beauty one morning and deferred to Rand (aka MAN) to kill it. So gross. His legs are striped.

Cam woke up one night shouting and writhing because he thought spiders were crawling on him. I don't blame him. I was also paranoid most nights. I think I just felt one on my leg right now, actually. Haha. Good thing we played hard enough during the days to crash pretty quickly at night.

The day usually went like this: wake up, eat breakfast, play on the boat (wakeboard, waterski, kneeboard, etc), head back to the houseboat for lunch, relax for a little while/play games/read magazines, books, kindles, etc, then back out on the boat or swim before dinner. We also cliff-jumped, did yoga on the top of the house boat, got root beer floats at Dangling Rope, oogled over the houseboats at Antelope Point, and tubed. The tube was going really flat. I tried to do a back flip off it, but the real challenge was actually standing up on it. Thank you, Whitney for capturing this flattering display of my skills.

Wednesday (August 17th) was the best day of the trip...it was Whitney's BIRTHDAY! Woot woot. This is how excited she was...

The Watkins added to the fly paper decor with some lovely blue and red crepe paper and Cam and Brooke sprinkled confetti on various surfaces - house boat tables, counters, and Whitney while she was still asleep. Whit opened gifts in the morning. I got her a gold, oval locket with her initials engraved on the front and pictures of us in the middle. I think she liked it...who wouldn't? :) She also got an apron sewed by Grandma Katee, a biking outfit, and Jeep mats (they obviously didn't make it to LP). So fun. Cynthia made a delicious Waldorf Astoria cake...

Camden wanted a ding dong instead of cake so he put a candle in one...too funny. 

Later, Whitney failed to make good on her promise to jump off a cliff, but she did show everyone up on the wakeboard. And by everyone, I mean me. All of the Watkins are really good too. I guess I just hate admitting to being the only unskilled rookie wakeboarder there. Sigh. I do think I improved as the week progressed though. I figured out fairly early on how to get up and get out of the wake, but getting back in was the problem. I kept getting to the wake and then I'd either eat it or chicken out and back off. I made it back in once, somehow, but couldn't figure it out again. Darn.

This is me, chickening out

But who cares...because Lake Powell is SOOOO fun and so pretty and makes me want to jump in the air multiple times and make Brooke try to capture it. Kudos to Brooke. And too bad for High School Musical for not casting Whitney and I :)