Time For Sweets: Billy’s Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes & Nancy Baggett’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunkers

I haven’t posted about desserts for a while (for me anyway).This week I baked some dough I already had in the freezer from Christmas and I also made the Billy’s Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes.The cupcakes I made exactly as written—I found the recipe on both A Cracking Good EggandA Whisk and A Spoon(both blogs of fellow Daring Bakers and both worth checking out), where KJ and Stephanie raved about them.As I have discussed elsewhere, I am not really into the whole cupcake revolution, but the mom in me really enjoys making them.I agree with KJ and Stephanie that the basic cake batter is worthy of becoming your go-to cupcake batter.It is excellent—and was still excellent 3 days out (I did cut the recipe in half or we might have been still eating them one week later!).The frosting was typical—a little too sweet and I wouldn’t mind playing around with it to find other combos–like maybe a cream cheese frosting.But the cake was amazing. Very different in its use of cold butter, not creamed butter. I have no pictures—Alex and I decorated them together and it did not really lead to a good photo op.Who other than a toddler wants to eat bright turquoise cupcakes? So check out the links and see what other people have done with the recipe.

These Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunkers however get along with my camera just fine.I was originally just looking for a basic chocolate chip peanut butter cookie since I had run out of dessert around here, which I really hate on the weekend, since it seems like a time to relax.I think these qualify as a heck of a lot better than just basic.And they did end up taking a tad more time than most drop cookie recipes.But they are worth it.

The original recipe calls for all AP flour and no peanut butter chips.I however have found that peanut butter cookies really benefit from peanut butter chips to boost the peanut butter flavor and I have also found that peanut butter cookies really embrace whole grain flours.Next time I will use an even greater percentage of white whole wheat flour—but if you don’t have any just use all AP.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunkers

Adapted from Nancy Baggett’s The All-American Cookie Book

Ingredients

1 cup white whole wheat flour (5 oz)

1 ½ cups AP flour (6 ¾ oz)

¼ t salt

1 t baking soda

1 cup (2 sticks) softened unsalted butter

1 ¼ cups smooth or crunchy peanut butter (I used a combo of all natural and no stir natural)

1 ½ cups packed brown sugar

2/3 sugar

2 large eggs

1 T light corn syrup

2 t vanilla extract

*10 oz bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate, chopped (we used Scharffen Berger semi sweet; we strongly prefer semi sweet with peanut butter in this house)

¾ cup peanut butter chips or swirled peanut butter and milk chocolate chips

½ cup (2 ¼ oz) chopped unsalted peanuts

Preheat oven to 350 F.

*After chopping the chocolate, remove about 5 ounces of it into a separate bowl.If you are like me, and chopping your chocolate produces a lot of shavings, then remove all nice chocolate chunks into one of the bowls—the other bowl can have chunks and shavings.

Whisk together the salt, baking soda and flours and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together the peanut butter, butter and sugars for 2 minutes, or until light and fluffy.Add the eggs, corn syrup and vanilla and beat until well blended.Stir in the flour mixture until evenly incorporated.Stir in the peanut butter chips and the nice chocolate chunks (i.e., no shavings).Let the dough sit for 5 minutes to firm up.

While the dough is firming, mix the other chocolate chunks and shavings with the shopped peanuts.Place in a wide shallow bowl.

Shape portions of the dough into 1 ¾ inch balls with lightly greased hands.Dip the ball into the peanuts/chocolate chunks mixture, pressing lightly on one side.Place the balls, coated sides up, onto parchment lined baking sheets.The recipe makes 36 cookies—I made 12 cookies per sheet.

Bake the cookies for 13-16 minutes, until lightly browned and still soft to touch.Reverse the sheet from front to back halfway through (and top to bottom if cooking 2 trays at once).Transfer the sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies cool until they are firm enough to move.Because I like my cookies on the underdone side, I let them cool completely on the sheets.Remove them to a cooling rack individually sooner if you are concerned they will cook too much on the hot sheet.