Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies with Pretzels

Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies with Pretzels

March 3, 2016 by Barb | Creative-Culinary.com 3 Comments

How many times have I shared my rigorous exercise when developing recipes? How I’ll take pen and paper and magazines and cookbooks and devour ideas so that I can come up with something unique? Never? Really? Well, maybe because that’s not how I roll! While I see many proclaim to be ‘Professional Recipe Developers’ I think my method is more organic and really not so professional in my eyes except that I might get paid for that work today. No, what I do is so typical of what happened when I came up with these Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies with Pretzels.

I actually tested this, well sort of, a couple of weeks ago when I had some leftover sugar cookies I had made for my neighbors for valentines. I had piped Valentine hearts with vanilla frosting on dozens of cookies and had a small amount left on the counter. I also had some melted chocolate in a pan that right now I couldn’t even tell you from what. I had the brainiac idea to combine the chocolate and vanilla because I wanted something different and then slathered it on the remaining cookies. They looked a bit boring after I had made more nicely decorated ones with sprinkles so I decided they needed more…nuts or something. I open the pantry and see some pretzels and the rest is history. Well, almost. When I saw that The Food Network’s theme for today’s #ComfortFoodFeast was Peanuts an idea started to bubble up from somewhere; the sugar cookies were now peanut butter and the chocolate frosting was a simpler chocolate ganache and voila…here are the results!

Not that I need a lot of encouragement to love Peanut Butter Cookies but this sure helped! I used my favorite chocolate to dip them; a combination of dark and milk chocolate which has became my standard. If you prefer all dark or all milk chocolate by all means switch that up. Adding chocolate was sort of classic but the pretzels? Not just a nice touch of salt but a great crunch; something that’s not so typical with peanut butter cookies. Even here in dry Colorado, the amount of fat in a peanut butter cookies seldom sees them get really crunchy so this was a nice texture bonus.

Were they a hit? Well I’ve been tempted not to share if that says anything; I always give away desserts! They’re even good for breakfast or were this morning. These cookies and a cup of coffee. Heaven.

BarbServes 4

Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies with Pretzels

20 minPrep Time

15 minCook Time

35 minTotal Time

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Ingredients

Instructions

In a large mixing bowl, use a mixer and blend the softened butter, peanut butter, both sugars, egg, vanilla, and salt until nice and creamy.

Sift together the flour and baking soda and add to softened mixture a cup at a time and mix well.

Roll dough into balls about 1" in diameter.

Place cookie balls on baking sheet. Leave space - about two inches all around. They spread a bit.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes at 375 degrees F in a preheated oven until the cookies are done. They should be a pretty golden brown color. Let cool completely.

For the Chocolate Ganache:

Melt the butter over medium low heat; once it starts to melt, add the chocolate and continue to warm on low until all of the chocolate is melted and combined with the butter. Using a whisk, blend in the half and half until the mixture is smooth and creamy and light enough to be able to dip the cookies.

Dip the cookies halfway in the chocolate, letting the excess drip back into the pan and then dip the chocolate coated side into the crushed pretzels.

Put on a parchment lined sheet and allow to cool (I popped mine in the fridge for 15 minutes).

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