Guest Post: Peanut Butter Cookies by Dinner or Dessert

Sometimes my graduate student life takes over and leaves me incapable of sharing treats to feast your eyes upon. One of those times is now, so while I venture off into the wonderful land of yeast I thought I would expand your horizons to other great food blogs by having some guest posts during my absence! I promise you will enjoy it. Just make sure you miss me a little bit, okay?

First up, I’d like you to meet Shannon from dinner or dessert. The first thing I noticed about her blog were the pictures, they are beautiful! And the recipes she makes are delectable as well, such as breakfast mac and cheese (Seriously? I can have that for breakfast!?) and oatmeal cookie chunk ice cream. Today, I am thrilled that she is sharing yet another one of her yummy treats on the The Spiffy Cookie! It involves peanut butter, and you know how much I adore peanut butter ;-).

We also discovered each other through an interesting story, as she will share with you below. The blogging world is full of surprises. Most recently we realized our birthdays are two days apart (Me-May 4th, Shannon-May 6th), which also happens to be the same weekend as the Beale Street music festival. So hopefully I will soon get to meet Shannon in real life, over a plate of some Memphis BBQ I imagine.

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Hi, I’m Shannon from dinner or dessert and am so excited to be guest posting for Erin while she is at her conference. The first time I stumbled across Erin’s blog was August 25th of last year. Weird I know the date, right? Well, funny story. My boyfriend is in grad school at University of Tennessee in Memphis (where Erin is getting her PhD) and he had told me his classes would be moving to a brand new building on campus. Well that week he had mentioned how the building was finally ready and there was a gigantic orange bow on the front of the building. I imagined an orange bow spread across the front door that they would cut with extra large scissors to celebrate, you know the usual.  So while I was cruising through food blogs that day I came across Erin’s post and saw a HUGE orange bow on the front of the building. Uhhh not exactly the bow I had in mind but thought it was crazy that out of all the blogs I could have been reading, I stumbled across Erin’s with her Petri dish cookies and UT orange bow! Since then, I’ve been a Spiffy Cookie reader!

Now on to these perfect peanut butter cookies.  These cookies are fat and fluffy and chewy and soft and so amazingly good!  The chunky peanut butter, chopped peanuts and peanut butter chips give them tons of peanut butter flavor with the perfect balance of crunchy and chewy.  These cookies smelled so good coming out of the oven, I couldn’t even let my one test cookie cool before eating it. Pair these cookies with a big glass of milk and try to resist eating the entire batch.

Peanut Butter Cookies
makes 18-20 cookies

1 1/3 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 c. butter, room temperature
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1/2 c. sugar
1 c. peanut butter (I used crunchy)
1/2 c. salted peanuts, chopped
1/2 c. peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set bowl aside.

In a large bowl, beat together butter and both sugars for 3 minutes or until mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla and egg. Add peanut butter, peanuts and peanut butter chips and beat on low for 2 minutes.

Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture and mix until combined.

Scoop the cookies into medium to large size balls and form cookies into 2 inch x 2 inch discs. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 13-15 minutes. If you like chewy peanut butter cookies, take the cookies out of the oven when they are still soft in the middle and let them sit on the cookie sheet for 3 minutes before taking them off to cool.