Test Kitchen: Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows
Does anyone else remember the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ads from the early 90s, where two people — one holding a bar of chocolate, the other holding a jar of peanut butter — bump into each other, causing the chocolate bar to drop into the peanut butter jar?
“You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” one exclaims.
“You got peanut butter on my chocolate!”
The new ads for Reese’s special holiday Peanut Butter eggs — where a chocolate Easter bunny finds itself inexplicably attracted to a jar of Reese’s peanut butter — also explores the mystery of how someone thought to put chocolate and peanut butter together to make one absolutely fantastic snack food that changed America forever. (Hershey, the chocolate company that makes Reese’s cups, does not say how Mr. Reese — the dairy man who invented the confection — came up with the idea for peanut butter-covered chocolate, but I think it had something to do with beer or drugs. Most good inventions do.)
All of this digression brings me back to the point at hand: making something chocolate peanut buttery at home. If you’ve picked up the book Top Secret Recipes
That, however, has changed.
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This, my friends, is all you need to make your own chocolate-peanut butter deliciousness in your very own kitchen, in cookie form. The recipe is from the forth-coming Isa Moskowitz book Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite Treats
Thing is, I don’t need another cookbook. Honestly, I just don’t. My tiny kitchen’s cabinets are already buckling under the weight of 10 cookbooks plus several years worth of Cook and Bon Apetite magazines. And, while I have all of Isa’s cookbooks to date in there, I really don’t need another one considering I haven’t cooked everything within the pages of the first three books she wrote.
Still, those peanut butter cups did look tempting. And take another look at the ingredients picture up there. Unlike some of Isa’s other recipes, this one uses no special ingredients — everything I need, I already had ready in the cupboard. That was pretty special in and of itself. And then there was the awesomeness factor of making a recipe from a cookbook that doesn’t even have a cover uploaded yet, and the ability to review the recipe before other people. (Please ignore the fact that the recipe has been online for several weeks now.)
These little pillows of peanut butter and chocolate heaven live up to their name — the exterior chocolate cookie is very lightweight, with a dense inside of peanut butter that is gooey and delicious fresh out of the oven. David and I ended up eating so many, we barely ate our dinner an hour later — even though the cookies were supposed to be dessert — because we couldn’t stop popping the little delights into our mouths.
It should be noted that they are a bit more labor-intensive than your usual drop cookie. The peanut butter dough requires natural peanut butter, which means a good five or so minutes of very slowly mixing the separated oil and peanut butter layers if you’re opening a new jar. Using a mixer made mixing up the doughs easier, but then there was the process of making the peanut butter balls (not so hard) and making the chocolate outer layer, which is not hard, but just time consuming to do 24 times, all the while making sure that the peanut butter is completely encased in the chocolate.
But the time it takes to get it right is totally made up for in the perfection of these cookies. Please keep in mind that these are NOT as sweet or dense as a Reese’s PBC. They’re not meant to be. But, they totally satisfy that part of me that loves PBCs, and both my stomach and my wallet look forward to carrying these little gems to work every day rather than going to the vending machine to shell out $1 for two HFCS-filled candies just to get my chocolate and peanut butter fix.
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Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows
From the upcoming book Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite Treats
INGREDIENTS
- Chocolate dough:
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
- 3 tablespoons non-dairy milk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup unsweetened dutch processed cocoa powder (Ed. Note: I used Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder)
- 2 tablespoons black unsweetened cocoa or more dutch processed unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup natural salted peanut butter, crunchy or creamy style
- 2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
- 2 to 3 tablespoons soy creamer or non-dairy milk
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Filling:
INSTRUCTIONS
- In a large mixing bowl combine oil, sugar, maple syrup, non-dairy milk and vanilla extract and mix until smooth. Sift in flour, cocoa powder, black cocoa if using, baking soda and salt. Mix to form a moist dough.
- Make the filling. In another mixing bowl beat together peanut butter, confectioner’s sugar, 2 tablespoons of soy creamer and vanilla extract to form a moist but firm dough. If peanut butter dough is too dry (as different natural peanut butters have different moisture content), stir in remaining tablespoon of non-dairy milk. If dough is too wet knead in a little extra powdered sugar.
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Shape the cookies. Create the centers of the cookies by rolling the peanut butter dough into 24 balls. Scoop a generous tablespoon of chocolate dough, flatten into a disc and place a peanut butter ball in the center. Fold the sides of the chocolate dough up and around the peanut butter center and roll the chocolate ball into an smooth ball between your palms. Place on a sheet of waxed paper and repeat with remaining doughs. If desired gently flatten cookies a little, but this is not necessary.
- Place dough balls on lined baking sheets about 2 inches apart and bake for 10 minutes. Remove sheet from oven and let cookies for 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack to complete cooling. Store cookies in tightly covered container. If desired warm cookies in a microwave for 10 to 12 seconds before serving.
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