Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies

Since becoming a mom, I have had little time to cook or bake.  Gone are the days where I would seek out new recipes for dinner or try using ingredients I never cooked with before.  Baking occurs mostly at night when the baby is asleep, if I have the energy, or when family is over to watch the baby while I bake.  The baby is almost 8 months old and I am slowly getting back into the groove of things.  I've told the hubby he has to cook dinner twice a week now.  I don't care if it's something easy like pasta or tacos, or if he wants to make breakfast or a sandwich for dinner, or even if he picks up something on the way home from work (which isn't preferred).  I just don't want to be super mom all the time take the baby to day care, working all day, picking the baby up from day care, feeding the baby dinner, cooking dinner while still holding, playing with and entertaining the baby, and then putting the baby to bed.  I was doing that 5 days a week for over 3 months now and it's only been 2 weeks that the baby is sleeping through the night.  Imagine doing all that while getting 7 hours of interrupted sleep.

Okay, baking has become a treat... Well, it's always a been treat.  It was always my comfort, something I did to cure the pain, let the mind go blank, and the body to be at ease.  Now, the "treat" is that I get to feel "normal" again.  I get to feel like I'm not a working mom and do something I love to do for me... kind of like yoga. :)

About a month ago, my girlfriend organized a bake sale for her future step daughter.  She asked friends on FB to make a dozen cookies to sell at the bake sale.  I decided to take an old recipe and make it new.  I added nutella to peanut butter cookies. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup peanut butter (recipes tend to call for smooth peanut butter but I only have chunky lying around and it does just fine)
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1/4 cup Nutella

1. Combine butter, peanut butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla. Mix until well combined.
2. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a separte bowl. Slowly mix into the peanut butter mixture.
3. Stir in Nutella.
4. Bake at 350 degrees, about 7 to 10 minutes.
5. Allow to cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheet before transferring to a cooling rack.

PB + Jelly = always a good combo

These have been on my "to try" list for quite a while.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

The only changes I made were to use raspberry preserves instead of jelly (yuck), use 1/2 whole wheat flour, and a little less sugar.  Even though I had never made the recipe before, they tasted great to me!  I also did not line the pan with parchment and just used non-stick cooking spray.  The dough was easy to work with and I was able to spread it with my fingers.

I gave them all away and am now wishing I had some left!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

We had a few very ripe and slightly bruised bananas left over from last weekend's camping trip. Neither of us is a fan of eating mushy bananas so I decided to bake with them. I decided to try something different and I don't know how I never thought of this before... Take a couple of my favorite things and bake them all together.

The great thing about this recipe is that neither the chocolate, peanut butter nor bananas have a dominate taste in the bread. There is a good mix of each of them and the bread is moist. It also makes 2 loaves so you can freeze one and eat one.

Makes 2 Loaves

~ 12 slices per loaf

~185 calories per slice

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

3 bananas, mashed

1 cup milk (I used soy milk and you can't taste the difference.)

3/4 cup peanut butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I might try dark chocolate next time.)

1) Stir together flour, sugars, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Put aside.

2) Beat together bananas, milk, peanut butter, vanilla and egg. Mix in dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips.

3) Pour batter into 2 greased loaf pans. The batter will be about 1/2 a pan but the bread will almost double in size when baking.

4) Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until done.