Salted Peanut Butter-Chocolate Cookies

I'm in the middle of two projects right now, one that I'm working on for Apartment Therapy's Holiday DIY Gift Guide, the other a new iteration of the paper lantern project that involves collecting hundreds of leaves.  I hope to bring you at least one of those by next week.  In the meantime, here's what we were snacking on this week.  I followed my usual peanut butter cookie recipe, and added a couple of ingredients to the mix to give them a little something more, one being baking cocoa, the other cracked sea salt. The result is a soft at center, crispy at the edges cookie with a peanut butter cup flavor. Here are some glamour shots of cookie eating and the recipe.  Have a great weekend!

Salted Peanut Butter-Chocolate Cookies

Yields 12-14 3 1/2" cookies

1/2 cup room temperature butter*

1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup crunchy salted peanut butter

3/4 cup flour

3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

cracked sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Combine butter and sugar, whipping by hand or with a mixer until well combined. Whip in egg, then peanut butter. In a separate mixing bowl combine the flour, cocoa, and baking soda.  Add to the peanut butter mixture and fold in until just combined.  

Form into ping-pong sized balls, pressing down with a fork each way and bake for 9-11 minutes until firm at the edges, and toasted but fairly soft at center. Allow to cool on a rack and sprinkle with cracked sea salt to taste. 

* If you need to do a dairy substitute as we do, I recommend using Spectrum organic shortening over Earth Balance for baking.