Baking with the kids

[wiseheart]

I baked peanut-chocolate cookies with thirty fifth-term kids today. It was great fun. Recipe below, in case you want to try it.

Ingredients:

120 grams of white flour
50 grams of sugar
100 grams of peanuts, roast, chopped
100 grams of dark chocolate, chopped
50 grams of peanut butter
100 grams of butter or margarine
1 egg
1 pinch of baking powder

chocolate icing to decorate it afterwards

How to make it?

- Mix flour, sugar, peanuts, chocolate and baking powder in a dish.
- Melt butter and peanut butter in a small pot and allow it to cool a little.
- Add egg, butter and peanut butter to the dry ingredients; stir it with a wooden spoon.
- Form little balls of the size of a small walnut and set them onto the baking tin (buttered or lined with baking paper). Leave enough room between cookies to expand.
- Bake it in a pre-heated oven (180°C, Gas: 2) for 20 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool on the tin for a few minutes.
- Melt chocolate icing and drop half a teaspoon full on top of every cookie.

It's really easy to make; it takes about 35-40 minutes altogether, including preparations, and you'll have about 20-25 cookies, depending on the size you make them.

Comments

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I had unroasted whole peanuts at home and was too lazy to go out and buy anything else. I stuck the peanuts in a pan on the stove at low heat for 5-10 minutes until they started to colour and then I chopped them; things got a bit messy, but it got the job done. I also didn't have 'chocolate chips', which should be more properly called chocolate drops at home so chopped up a bar of Green & Black's dark chocolate. The cookies are in the oven as I type. Two questions:

1) was the chocolate meant to melt and distribute itself in the mix, or was it meant to stay as chocolate chips in the dough? (Mine melted.)

2) How much are the cookies meant to spread out? From your note about spacing them out I expected them to melt and form fairly thin, much bigger cookies when baking. (I have made a number of different types of cookies that do this, and if you put them too close together you end up with one very large cookie. Mine seem to stay pretty much the same shape as they were when I put them in.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I had to chop my peanuts, too; at least they were already roasted. And I meant chocolate chips, aka dark chocolate (or, in my case, a 100-gram block of chocolate coating) chopped in small pieces.

To answer your questions:

1) I'm not sure if the chocolate is meant to melt. Mine always melts, but again, chocolate coating tends to do that, and it tastes fantastic that way.

2) As for spreading out, I believe it depends on how firmly you push the dough together when you form the little balls. Mine usually keep their shape, but some of the kids did end up with almost saucer-size, flat... things. Not that it would influence the taste. ;)

So, how did yours turn out? Did you like them?

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

My cookies looked like this:



I wasn't quite sure what you meant by chocolate icing, so I just placed a white chocolate button on top of each of them while they were still warm so that the button melted and stuck to the cookie. I went to the south coast with some friends for an outing today and brought some of the cookies, which were very well received. I still have some for me at home, and have had two more since getting home. I really like them!

P.S. I wasn't having a go at you about the 'chocolate chip' thing, just in case you thought so. It is just that in this country they sell bags of little chocolate drops, that they call 'chocolate chips'. I see how they can be used as chocolate chips, but they aren't actually chipped off anything so I object to that term being used.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Your cookies are perfect! That's what they're supposed to look like. Interesting idea with the white chocolate button - they look better than with dark chocolate covering. I'll have to remember that next time.

It's all right with the chocolate chip thing; I know drops are different. I buy those sometimes in Vienna, as we don't have them over here. I just wanted to make it clear that you actually need chopped chocolate for these cookies.