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Chocolate-Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies will bring a little color and a lot of deliciousness to your holiday cookies. A traditional peanut butter cookie gets dipped in chocolate and brightened up with holiday sprinkles to make them extra awesome. I know you want one.
At the darkest time of the year when the earth is regenerating, there's a borderline depressing lack of light and color. It's no wonder so many cultures have mid-winter festivals in defiance of the darkness. If nature doesn't provide light and color, we create it ourselves. Humans are weird. And amazing. I love us.
I love the way we just bring trees and light right into our living rooms. We cover our homes in extra light. We eat, drink, and party like there's no tomorrow. We eat cookies by the bucket load. And we make them awesome and fancy and colorful because the world is dark and brown and cold and harsh. But we don't put up with that nonsense. We make our own happiness.
What makes Chocolate-Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies so awesome?
Can happiness be found in cookies? Well, maybe not on their own, but I think they're an important part of the bigger picture. These Chocolate-Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies are inspired by my mom and her holiday cookie-baking frenzy. To make peanut butter cookies a little more Christmasy, she dipped them in chocolate and hit them with holiday sprinkles. She may not have finished high school, but in some ways, she was a genius.
These cookies are soft in the center and crisp around the edges with a deep peanut butter flavor. They're just the right amount of sweet. And chocolate is peanut butter's best friend. Get the whole family involved in the sprinkle action to make it even more fun.
Color magic in the kitchen
We can always look to the ingredients in our food to make them magical, but that's not the only way to do kitchen witchcraft. Color magic is an easy way to start working with witchcraft. We all have an instinctual feeling when we see certain colors, and that's powerful all on its own.
Some people think sprinkles are silly and childish, and it certainly takes a lot of effort to make them all-natural. But even though I normally go for subtle and understated, I'm definitely on team sprinkles. Especially when we find ourselves at the very bottom of the wheel of the year, anything to bring fun and festive color is welcome. So go wild and bring some color magic to this recipe. Use the colors that inspire you or keep it traditional with red and green for Yule. Make magic in whatever way feels best to you.
How to make Chocolate-Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies
This is a classic peanut butter cookie recipe. The only slight difference with peanut butter cookies compared to say, chocolate chip, is that the peanut butter makes the dough a bit thicker, so they benefit from a bit of shaping. I like to scoop them out then use a fork in a criss-cross pattern to get the traditional lines. That's the way my mom did it.
To add the chocolate dip, all you need to do is melt a bit of chopped chocolate, chocolate chips, or whatever form you like to use with a bit of vegetable oil so it stays shiny without tempering. You can do this in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water or in the microwave. If you go the microwave route, you'll need to stir every 20-30 seconds. Don't even start this until your cookies are completely cooled.
I melt my chocolate in a smallish bowl and tilt it to make a deeper pool of chocolate to dip into. Just dip as much of the cookie as you like, let the excess drip off, then place the cookie on some baking paper to set. Get a partner (bonus points if it's a child) to help add the sprinkles while the chocoltae is still melty. You're really gonna want to eat these right away, but try to let the chocolate go back to solid first. Or just be prepared for a huge mess.
FAQ
Choose a chocolate you enjoy eating. I'd go for a semi-sweet chocolate, and I tend to use chocolate chips because I almost always have some in the pantry. If you've got a partial bag of chocolate chips or a half a chocolate bar in your baking pantry, this is a great way to use it up. But if it tastes good to you, you could really do anything.
Defy the darkness with lights, indoor trees, parties, and lots and lots of Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies. It's what our ancestors would have wanted.
Looking for more awesome Christmas cookie recipes? Try these No-Fail Sugar Cookies or some White Chocolate Cranberry Macadamia Nut Cookies.
PrintChocolate-Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies
Chocolate-Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies will bring a little color and a lot of deliciousness to your holiday cookies. A traditional peanut butter cookie gets dipped in chocolate and brightened up with holiday sprinkles to make them extra awesome.
- Prep Time: 45
- Cook Time: 9
- Total Time: 54 minutes
- Yield: 30 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegetarian
Ingredients
- ¾ cup creamy peanut butter
- ½ cup (4 ounces) butter, softened
- 1-¼ cup brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons milk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1-¾ cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup dark chocolate chips
- 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C) and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together peanut butter, butter, brown sugar, milk, and vanilla until well combined. Add the egg and continue beating until everything is smooth.
- In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir to combine.
- With your mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture and beat until everything just comes together.
- Scoop out your dough about a tablespoon at a time, leaving space for the cookies to spread. Flatten the dough with your fingers or use a fork in a crossed pattern to create those classic lines.
- Bake for 8 to 9 minutes or until the cookies just start to brown around the edges. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 3 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- When the cookies are cooled, melt your chocolate with the vegetable oil in the narrowest container you have that you can still fit a cookie and your hand inside. To use the microwave, stop and stir your chocolate every 30 seconds until it's smooth.
- Dip each peanut butter cookie into the chocolate and allow the excess to drip back into the bowl. Place your cookie on wax paper and add the sprinkles while the chocolate is still melty. Allow the chocolate to cool in the fridge or on the counter if your kitchen is not too warm.
Keywords: Peanut Butter, Chocolate, Cookies
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