Chocolate, Cinnamon and Peanut Butter Cookies

I never know for sure, because it's very hard to tell at the outset, but I think that this may be one of the recipes that someone will read here and then actually go off and make. If you're feeling like you might be that person, well, I invite you to scroll down: the picture of the dough is going to seal the deal.

After Monday's biscotti, I am pleased to be posting another biscuit recipe. Sometimes you need something easy and simple to be getting on with, and that's why I like cookies. Nothing taxing about making them, and you get to have a full biscuit jar. It's win-win.

Nigella Lawson once said that making biscuits always seems like the sort of cooking that somebody else does, and I know what she means, up to a point. But when you do get around to it (and I say this with absolute conviction), you always wonder why you don't do it more often, and what has been keeping you from doing it sooner. It's exactly the same feeling as the one I get when I listen to old Neneh Cherry records.

(I find that analogy to be particularly pleasing.)

See what I mean? You are so going to make these.

Now, why these cookies are so sensational is that you don't have to bake them all in one go. It's not that you can't (but don't eat them all in one go, please), but that the dough, when portioned and shaped into squidgy mounds, can be frozen. For ages. You can then bake the frozen dough balls straight from the freezer, and so never be more than twenty minutes away from freshly baked cookies. This is, in fact, what Lucinda Scala Quinn, editorial director of food and entertaining for Martha Stewart Living does, so as to have fresh cookies on hand for 'casual get-togethers'.

'Casual get-togethers'? Lucinda - I want an invitation!

I may well end up making these as Christmas gifts actually. I quite like the idea of giving them out, packaged in their frozen state. You get so much sugary stuff around the festive season that it would be quite cool to give someone a batch of biscuits they can bake when they want, instead of watching them stale in a prettily ribboned jar.

Just a thought.




Chocolate, Cinnamon and Peanut Butter Cookies
adapted from Cookies

You will need:

2 cups plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
175g butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup soft brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
2/3 cup chopped salted peanuts
2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Heat oven to 180°C, and line a baking sheet with parchment.
2. Whisk together flour, salt, bicarb. and cinnamon in a bowl.
3. Cream the butter, peanut butter and sugars together until smooth and combined. Beat in eggs and vanilla, followed by the dry ingredients. Mix to a smooth dough.
   
4. Fold in nuts and chips; refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.
5. Use an ice-cream scoop to make balls of dough; place balls onto lined baking sheet, well spaced. Bake for 12 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.