It is a freaking miracle we have not had to call poison control yet, I always seem to catch him in the nick of time. There is nothing quite so stressful as always knowing that if your kid is awake, you are two minutes away from baby kamikaze. This list makes me sound like a terrible parent, I know. You other moms get me, right?? Solidarity! Apparently he had snuck out the side gate where my friends had come in. It takes a village, right? Good thing I have amazing neighbors or I would have lost all my kids by now. We are in that wonderful phase where the baby gets into everything, all the time. You turn your back for one second and a nightmare has occurred. Things Edison did this week: Sprayed himself with copious amounts of Eric’s cologne. Took a bite out of Eric’s deodorant. Ate a cigarette butt at the park. Ran out into the street (I was there this time). Played in the toilet. Rammed his head into our stone hearth, resulting in a massive goose egg on his forehead. Ate a Lego. Puked up said Lego. Dragged a chair over to the water dispenser on the fridge and pushed all the buttons (thank goodness it locks). Dragged a chair over to where the candy is kept and tried to climb in. Dragged a chair over to the stove and tried to turn on the gas burners. Took an actual bite out of my phone case. Climbed onto the counter and started the toaster. Half-chomped a dishwasher soap pod. Ate my chapstick. Facebook | Pinterest | Instagram I even did a peanut butter themed cake. Eric’s birthday was a few weeks ago, and he requested a chocolate peanut butter cake. I made my favorite Chocolate Cake, smashed chocolate buttercream and chopped up Reese’s in the middle, with Peanut Butter Frosting on the outside, and a ganache layer on top. Plus more Reese’s cups and crushed Butterfinger. It was decadently rich and way more effort than I usually put into cakes. Are you into making fancy cakes? It’s not my forte but it’s always fun once in a while. I’m more interested in having flavorful, moist cakes than having them be super fancy looking. Plus those ganache drips are WAY HARDER than all the food bloggers make them look!!! I kind of feel like my cake looks like one of those Pinterest fail “nailed it” cakes, haha! We ate nothing but peanut butter and chocolate for days. So worth it. If I can get the drip right, would anyone like the cake recipe? First we are going to start out with a decadent peanut butter dough. BRING ON THE PEANUT BUTTER FLAVOR. I like to mix my butter and sugars together really well and make sure there are no lumps before adding in the peanut butter. If your butter is cold (I always start cookies with cold butter and beat it into submission with my stand mixer) and you don’t beat it well enough, and then add the peanut butter, you will have little butter chunks in your dough that are super hard to get out. No thanks. Easy solution, just mix together the butter and sugar really well first (this is called “creaming” although sometimes I don’t use that word because then inexperienced bakers get really confused about when they were supposed to add the cream, which I think is kind of hilarious.) 2 – Anyway. Add in your peanut butter. A whole cuppa this stuff. I love to use Jif. Do you use a particular brand of peanut butter? I used to not care until I did a taste test for my Softest Peanut Butter Cookie. High quality brands really do have better flavor and texture. 3 – Here are all your mix-ins. You are going to have a lot of orange wrappers! I added even more pretzels than in this photo (it’s correct in the recipe). The first few batches I made, people told me that it needed more pretzels. Bring it on!! Look at all this goodness. It’s hard to even find the dough in there. I like to chop up some of my ingredients before adding them, that’s why you can see a bunch of crumbs. Obviously the Reese’s cups need to be chopped. I use big ol Ghirardelli bittersweet baking chips and prefer when at least half the amount that I’m using in my cookies are chopped smaller. Then I like to chop half of the Reese’s Pieces. I do this anytime I’m adding M&M’s to a cookie recipe too. It’s nice to be able to distribute that flavor and crunch a little more! 4 – Then make sure you fold it in with a spatula instead of beating it in. We don’t want to crush the Reese’s cups! 6 – Then, after you take them out of the oven, use a spoon to smoosh the edges in toward the center a little bit. See more details about this technique on my Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies post. It makes the cookies more fudgy and less crunchy on the edges. It’s by far my favorite cookie technique! Then, it’s a rule, you have to eat at least one of these cookies warm with some milk. It’s just the best, right? My mom always puts cookies in the fridge after baking and eats them cold. She’s a monster. Sorry mom, it’s true. I don’t even know what planet you are from. If you want to freeze balls of dough, set them out on a baking sheet just a little bit apart and freeze for 30 minutes before tossing in a ziplock bag. Voila, you now have the power to bake up these cookies anytime you want! You can just bake them straight from frozen. YES.
Can you freeze cookie dough with pretzels in it?
Yes you totally can! I actually assumed that you would not be able to do this. Won’t the pretzels get soggy? But these cookies taste great even after chilling or freezing. The pretzels are not going to be next-level-crisp as when they were fresh, but they are not soggy either. They still have a nice snap in the center. Totally worth being able to freeze and chill ahead of time!
