Peanut Butter and Jelly for a Picnic!

When I was in third, fourth, and fifth grades, every day, for lunch, I would have a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. My parents would pack me one, in my lunch, every day, for over three years. So it goes to show that I love PB+J.

On a completely different note, some friends were putting together a picnic. Obviously, I opted to make dessert. (Chef A made pretzels!) I needed a fun, simple, summery dessert. Cookies seemed ideal and easy to transport, but I wanted something fun and original. I originally thought of jam thumbprints, which has a nice, fruity sound to them, but wanted something a little more... unusual. That's when I remembered PB+J. And then quickly set about finding a recipe.

I was halfway through figuring out how to combine a thumbprint sugar-cookie recipe and a peanut-butter-cookie recipe, when I found this. It was perfect. I threw it together, modified a little tiny bit, and went off to my picnic. I have a recipe for you:

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
vanilla
sugar for rolling

3/4 cup jam, jelly, or preserves
2 tsp sugar (optional)

Directions:

I didn't have any shortening on hand when I made the recipe, so I was substituting butter. It also didn't have enough peanut-butter flavor, so I tweaked the amounts a little bit to just give it a little bit more edge. Okay, cookies are nice and simple:

Preheat that oven to 375F. Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda and set aside. Cream together the sugars, butter, and peanut butter until smooth and fluffy, add the eggs, milk, and vanilla. Slowly add the flour mixture, mixing thoroughly after each addition, until you have a nice cookie batter.

Form into small balls (I usually go for about 3/4" diameter), roll in sugar, and drop onto an ungreased cookie sheet (actually, I used SilPats, but the recipe says ungreased is fine). This recipe makes a decent number of cookies. Be aware. You may want to cut this in half to avoid having to cart around a giant tray full of over 50 cookies. You have been warned.

Bake the cookies for about 10-12 minutes. While they're baking, I recommend the following step: toss the jelly/jam/preserves into a small saucepan and heat it up to thin it out, then dissolve the sugar in it. I personally think it adds just a nice contrast to the more savory peanut butter flavor of the cookies later on.

Take the cookies out of the oven when they're just starting to brown around the edges. They should be decently soft and chewy-looking, but solid enough to hold a shape. Give them a second to cool and then make a mad dash (with your thumb) through the line of cookie, indenting the centers. Warning: Hot! So hot! It's best to do this while the cookies are still hot and pliable, but be careful for your thumb!

Once both the cookies and the jam have cooled down a little, spoon a little bit of the jam into each cookie indent. These can be eaten warm or not, and are super-tasty no matter when you have them. I recommend with milk.

~Chef G