PB + Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peanut butter and chocolate has always been one of my favorite combinations, so I decided to spruce up some peanut butter cookies with some good ol' chocolate chips.

Here's my recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies:

You may be wondering why I included a jar of molasses with my ingredient pic above, and that's actually a funny story (get ready for this one!). Turns out I was out of brown sugar. I had just gone to the grocery store and was not motivated to go back just for some brown sugar. Husband to the rescue! Being the scientist that he is, he of course came up with the brilliant idea to make our own brown sugar. I was a little hesitant. This is a little how the conversation went... 

Me: "Oh no! We're out of brown sugar!"

Him: "Why don't you just make your own."

Me: "Ha! Yeah, ok..."

Him: "It's so easy! It's just molasses and white sugar."

Me: "Um, of course it is! And how do you know this?"

Him: "Uh, Duh. Everyone knows that!"

Ok, that's not exactly how it went, but pretty close. Thankfully, I had made molasses cookies during Christmas and still had some leftover molasses in the cupboard, so one google search and two ingredients later we had our own homemade brown sugar. Awesome. And now you get a twofer! Two recipes in one today (Score!). 

Here's my recipe for some Homemade Brown Sugar:

1 cup white sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons molasses

My PB cookie recipe only calls for 1/2 cup brown sugar, so I used 1/2 cup white sugar and 3/4 tablespoon molasses.

Mix together molasses and white sugar with fork (or whisk, or whatever you want).

And as Emeril would say, BOOM! Brown Sugar.

Ok, so here's my recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Ingredients

1/2 cup softened butter

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/4 cups flour

3/4 bag of chocolate chips

Beat butter and peanut butter on medium-high for 30 seconds.

Add white sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, and baking powder. Beat in egg and vanilla.

Beat in flour (as much as you can).

Add chocolate chips!

Roll into one inch balls and place on cookie sheet.

Bake 7-9 minutes (I usually stay towards 7 minutes so they stay super soft) at 375 degrees.

The best part is, I couldn't even tell that I hadn't used the regular brown sugar, but my homemade version instead. If anything, the homemade brown sugar made it taste better! I might be using this technique more in the future...

Happy eating!