Recipe: Chocolate, Peanut Butter, White Chocolate Chip, Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

My three favorite cookie recipes are from Barefoot Contessa: chocolate white-chocolate-chip cookies; peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies; and classic chocolate chip cookies. So why not combine them all into one super cookie??

Nothing was stopping me, so I did it.

This recipe is double what a run-of-the-mill cookie recipe will make. But why would you want 36 cookies when you could have 72? That is a rhetorical question.

Just take the dough for your extra 60 cookies, roll it into balls, place the balls very close together on a cookie sheet so that you can fit them all onto one sheet, then stick them in the fridge for a few hours. If you’re not going to bake them in the next day-ish, then pop them off the sheet and put them in Tupperware in the freezer.

They’ll be ready to bake when unexpected guests arrive, or when a friend has a bad day, or when you have a bad day. You could also half the recipe. But why would you do that, you cookie hater?

Chocolate, Peanut Butter, White Chocolate Chip, Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

Wet

• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1.5 cups white sugar
• 1 lb unsalted butter at room temperature
• 4 large eggs at room temperature
• 3 tsp vanilla
• 1.5 cups smooth, salted peanut butter
• 1.5 cups cocoa powder
• 1 tbs ground coffee or espresso powder

Dry

• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 5 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt

Mix-ins

• 1.5 cups white chocolate chips
• 1 cup dark chocolate chunks

Now Do This:

• Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer.
• Add the eggs and vanilla and mix.
• Add in peanut butter and mix.
• Add in cocoa powder and espresso powder and mix.
• In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients together, then add to wet and mix.
• Stir in white chocolate chips and dark chocolate chips or chunks.
• Roll cookies into balls and bake at 350 for approximately 9-11 min (my current oven runs hot so you may need a bit longer, but I really like these chewy in the center).

Note: Don’t flatten these cookies before baking. The dough can be a little cakey, so when I flattened them, they came out too dry. They work much better when they are a little more tender in the center, and if you leave them in ball form, that seems to happen nicely.

Let me know how this recipe works for you and if you have any tweaks! I often make mistakes…

Guest Post: Barefoot Contessa Smackdown

Apologies for a tardy entrance to the week here at Momsicle. K-Pants and I have been getting our calluses filed down on a beach in Costa Rica visiting friends in North Carolina, doing laundry, shopping for socks, and pondering the big bang. We’re just behind the 8.

But we have a Guest Post!! Holla.

My trusty-superhero friend Marisa is a brilliant teacher (check out her brand-new blog at stressfreeteacher.com), a one-time minor league baseball journalist, a Ph.D. student, and—above all—someone who licks the last drop of honey off of life’s baklava plate. She’s taken the Barefoot Contessa’s phrase “How easy is that?” to another level. Here’s Marisa showing off her SLR to make us all jealous.

As a side note, she’s a vegetarian: So if you’re tired of me throwing bacon at everything, you have a respite.

Ina Garten v. Ina-in-a-Bowl

I love cookbooks. They’re my favorite form of fiction writing. The pictures are pretty and the stories they tell are ones of effortless food-assembly with delicate ingredients laid out in multicolored bowls as the chef dances around the kitchen.

Then there’s my kitchen: Sometimes the fridge smells funky, and I think maybe we should just buy a new one and start over. Also, I’m always cooking when I’m hungry (why is that?) which means I’m only capable of monosyllabic utterances until my blood sugar returns to a functional level. [Note: this was a serious issue between my husband and me early on. We refer to the low-blood-sugar state as The Wolf.]

So when a fancy cookbook has extra steps—like stuffing pasta shells with ricotta or baking polenta in a pie plate—my friend the Barefoot Contessa and I have words.

“Listen, Ina,” I start. “I respect your aesthetic prowess. I really do. But did you chop that celery? Did you? No. A production assistant did while you were shopping at Chico’s for casual, form-flattering garden-party wear. I was teaching children to read all day. How do you think they learn to read your cookbooks? Not in front of a barbecue in the Hamptons.

This is not a productive conversation between me and Ina—not fair to the gracious Contessa, and not fair to you, the poor, hungry worker bee.

Enter the “Food in a Bowl” strategy. I skip the fancy steps by throwing food items into a bowl. You can still do this in a classy way, such as with a jaunty wrist-flick motion while kicking up one of your feet.

You will be eating a lot faster.
 Evelyn didn’t think it could be done, but this Barefoot Contessa-style recipe can be accomplished using Goya products. [Editor’s note: I am still skeptical. And where is the bacon??]

If you’re entertaining visiting dignitaries, go ahead and spend twenty minutes rolling up these ingredients into tortillas, then rebake for another twenty. Knock yourself out.

But if you want to eat RIGHT NOW, try the “Food in a Bowl” strategy. You won’t go back.

Squash Enchiladas in a Bowl

You need:

-one acorn squash

-one can of pinto beans  (I know Foodtown has these. A whole aisle!)
 [Editor’s Note: You’re right on this one. Goya even makes low-sodium beans-in-a-can now.]

-one can of enchilada sauce (You with me Foodtown? Oh yeah.)

-spinach: two big handfuls or so.

-tortilla chips

-cheese

Wrap the acorn squash in saran wrap. Stick it in the microwave for 15 minutes. (Yes, that long. It won’t explode.) Go sit down for ten minutes with a Corona. At the five-minute mark, wilt the spinach and warm up the beans. When the squash is cooked, cut it in half, take out the seeds, and scoop some of the meaty flesh into the bowls. Throw in the spinach, beans, and cheese. Drizzle with enchilada sauce. Top with tortilla chips. Eat. Right now.

[I like that this recipe involves a Corona and some down time. That will give me time to dodge the missiles being thrown from the high chair, and perhaps give the Pants a bath, as well.

Please share your own life-saving dinner tips below! Happy Wednesday!]

In the Fast Lane with Barefoot Contessa

I’m watching Barefoot Contessa. I love her. I want to be a Girl Who Grills just like her. I want to have lunches with my gay friends while my husband’s at work just like her.

Today, she’s “cooking in the fast lane,” which, if you’ve seen Barefoot, is really a relaxed amble.

But hey, with a one year old, I’m always cooking in the fast lane, so I’m game and willing to give Barefoot the benefit of the doubt. She’s making a quick dinner for company, and she says: “You can find all the ingredients in any grocery store.”

Have you seen my FoodTown, Barefoot? You’re on! Let’s do this!

First, roasted broccoli with garlic and Parmesan. FoodTown recently started stocking Parmesan. It’s waxy, but I’m sure it melts eventually.

Next, fingerling potatoes with dill. Yes! They have weird-shaped potatoes.

And for the main dish: red snapper, available fresh at the fish counter. Whoa, whoa, Barefoot! FoodTown doesn’t have a George-Clooney-fishmonger named Dave like you do. But ground turkey and chicken hearts are on sale…

And for dessert: fresh berries with raspberry sauce and fromage blanc.

Sometimes I realize Barefoot has spent a little too much time in the Hamptons. She insists any grocery store will have fromage blanc: “It’s really become more common.” Really? Does Goya make it? Then FoodTown doesn’t stock it.

If I can’t find fromage blanc at my grocery store, she says, any specialty shop will have it. Tied down by a stroller and a budget, my specialty stores are the corner bodegas, but I’m not a big fan of their “specialties.”

I suddenly realize why my mom never used a recipe until I was thirteen. You start off with something lovely in mind: roasted broccoli, potatoes, red snapper, and raspberries; but you quickly realize your pantry is low, your grocery story doesn’t have everything you need, and your child is opening all the cabinets in the living room with a glue stick in his mouth.

Presto! Change of plans. All the ingredients you can find are frying up in the same pan with some garlic and olive oil.

As Barefoot would say: “How easy is that?”

(If you have a little time and a good specialty shop, then look up Barefoot’s Cooking in the Fast Lane recipes here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/barefoot-contessa/index.html.)