Milk & Cookies

Super ultra secret guest COOKiE blog!

I had promised to bring these into work when Zoe first started gracing us with her and Jason’s cookies…oops.  Yes, I am a procrastinator. lazy. You can make the dough way in advance and then slice them as you want them (which’ll probably be ASAP if you read a cookie blog, in which case it’s after ~8hrs. in the fridge). And they look pretty, which is why I wanted to make them in the first place.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pinwheels (Courtesty of Recipezaar)
Ingredients:
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter or chunky peanut butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For Filling:
1 (6 ounce) package semisweet chocolate morsels
1 teaspoon butter

Directions:
1. Sift flour with soda and salt.
2. Set aside.
3. Beat butter until fluffy.
4. Beat in sugar.
5. Beat in peanut butter, egg, and vanilla.
6. At low speed, add half flour mixture.
7. Mix in the rest by hand to form a stiff dough.
8. Refrigerate 30 minutes.
9. Meanwhile, make the filling by melting the chocolate and butter.
10. Cool.
11. Divide dough in half.
12. Roll each half into a 8×10 inch rectangle on a lightly floured surface. between two pieces of plastic wrap.  In the future, I would use two pans to flatten so that it’s more even. (Mine was fatter in the middle because I suck at rolling.)
13. Spread each with half the filling.
14. From the long side, roll each rectangle tightly like a jelly roll.
15. Gently press edge to seal.
16. Wrap separately, seam side down, in saran wrap or foil.
17. Refrigerate until firm, about 8 hours or overnight before slicing and baking.
18. (They will keep in the fridge for a little over a week.) Preheat oven to 375, and place 1/2 inch slices 1 1/2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet.  Warning: slicing these cookies may be tricky because the chocolate filling will likely be solid.
19. Bake 6-8 minutes or until lightly browned.
20. Let cool for a few minutes on sheet, then cool on wire rack.
21. Makes 40 cookies all together.

So, I had forgotten that these had to chill overnight…luckily, they bake super fast in the oven (6-7 minutes was plenty, and I still burned a bunch of ‘em). Slicing through the chocolate filling after a night’s hardening was tough, so I might add a bit more butter in the future. The PB cookie part of the swirls was the softest, chewiest PB cookie I’ve ever made. And it’s probably one of few cookies that was actually better fully cooled than straight out of the oven.  Work loved them, and I enjoyed them enough that I’ll probably make them again…although maybe somehow both add more chocolate and yet make it easier to cut through.