Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Welcome to my very first food posting! I have been taking pictures of my cooking for over a year now...even before I started a blog! But for some reason I haven't made a food posting. Maybe I have been intimidated by all the other great food blogs out there and the food postings by my friends. Or maybe I have just been a little too focused on the newest member of my family. :-)

I absolutely love to cook. It is definitely the activity that takes up the most time in my life when you factor in the planning, the shopping, the cooking, and don't forget about the cleaning! It is such a gratifying feeling to be able to create something that I love, but more importantly that someone else loves too. Luckily for me, I have a husband that loves to eat and values food so much that he will wrap up and save the 2 remaining bites of a meal for a "snack" to eat later. If he didn't enjoy my cooking so much, I know I wouldn't be nearly as motivated to put as much time and effort into what I make.

I love reading about food almost as much as I love cooking it. My favorite magazines are those that focus mostly on food (Southern Living is probably my favorite), and I love to read food blogs. I enjoy perusing cookbooks too, but I don't use them nearly as much as I should for the number that I have. (I have a bookcase purely devoted to cookbooks, and it doesn't even contain them all.) For some reason, I have a really difficult time cooking something from a recipe when I don't know what "real" people have to say about it. If I find a recipe in a cookbook that I want to use, I will first get on the computer and find a similar recipe on Food Network or Allrecipes just to read the comments. I want to know that the time and effort (and money!) I am about to expend on this recipe is going to be worth my while! I have just recently stumbled upon a food blog search site (found here), which I have used frequently in the past few weeks. If someone else used a recipe and it turned out well, I feel way more confident about trying it. With all that said, I don't typically follow recipes to the T, but that is another story for another posting.

Before I give you the recipe that this post is really about, let me just prove myself wrong on a couple accounts. First of all, I found this recipe in my large accordion file of recipe clippings from magazines (most likely from Southern Living). It did not have any user comments, and I did not search for similar recipes on the internet. I would have, but I didn't have enough time. I had friends from our church community group coming over in one hour, and I wanted something sweet to serve. Secondly, I followed the recipe (well...mostly. See below). This recipe involves baking, and I don't usually experiment with baking ingredients because I don't fully understand all the chemistry behind the magic that happens in the oven, despite my addiction to the show Good Eats.

The recipe I'm about to share is a cookie recipe. I never would have thought my first food post would be about cookies. I usually shy away from cookies when baking (I don't, however, shy away from cookies when they are on a plate in front of me) because I seem to think that they are going to take more time than making some kind of bar cookies, brownies, or easy cake that you don't have to drop by rounded tablespoon one by one. This recipe proved me wrong, as the whole dropping process can be done more quickly than I remembered, and there is no cutting to be done after they cool!

So, these cookies that have taken me this long to get to are called "Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies." If the word "flourless" doesn't make you a little suspicious that these actually turn out, how about I tell you that they are also butterless. Now, I don't want you to get the impression that these are health food cookies...but they seem to be a little more healthy to me than your average flour-butter-sugar cookie. Only 6 ingredients are needed, and you probably have all of them in your kitchen already. That is precisely why I picked this recipe from my file. I had everything on hand, and they seemed quick to prepare. I did not have time to weigh the pros and cons of this recipe over another, so I hastily and uncharacteristically jumped right in to the mixing.

Here are the ingredients:

brown sugar, chunky peanut butter, egg, baking soda, vanilla extract, and chocolate chips.
That's all!

I wasn't too confident about the outcome, so I was truly surprised when these cookies came out exactly how I would want a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie to be! This is from a girl who goes through a jar of peanut butter each week and consumes enough dark chocolate to fulfill the antioxidant needs for everyone on my block. The cookies turn out slightly crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. And they aren't too sweet, which I really love about them. (Take note that they might be more sweet if you don't use natural peanut butter). Everyone loved these cookies, and no one could tell they were flourless!

Ok, enough rambling. Here is the recipe. Make these cookies! You won't be disappointed. They will definitely be seen around my house again.

Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup chunky peanut butter (I used Smucker's natural chunky. Smooth would probably be fine too)
1 large egg
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels (the original recipe called for milk chocolate, so you can use whichever you prefer)

1. Stir together first 5 ingredients in a medium bowl, using a wooden spoon. Stir in chocolate morsels

2. Drop cookie dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet (I used a silpat). (Next time I might press the dough down slightly to get a flatter cookie)

3. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes or until puffed and golden. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes. Remove to a wire rack.

makes approximately 1 1/2 to 2 dozen