Peanut Butter Brown Sugar Cookies

I came home to bake cookies tonight and realized I only had about 1/3 cup of white sugar left - and it was way too cold to go back outside to the grocery store. So I set out to find a recipe that would work with just brown sugar. Surprisingly I found quite a few and set to work. One of my favorites food blogs is Simply Recipes (link at the bottom left of my own blog) - and I really feel like her recipes are reliable and tasty. That's where I got the base for these, but as usual - I changed it up a little. Don't even try the batter - it might just be better than the cookies themselves.

Peanut Butter Brown Sugar Cookies
                                                                                       1 cup brown sugar

1 stick butter (sweet cream salted)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 TB milk
1 1/4 cup flour
2 TB cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup dark chocolate shavings
                                                                                     *white sugar for rolling in before baking

1. Melt the butter a little and beat with electric mixer. Add the sugar and beat again. Then you can mix in the peanut butter, egg and vanilla. I added a TB of milk because it seemed like it needed to be a little thinner before I added the flour.

2. In a separate bowl whisk together the dry ingredients - flour, baking soda and powder, cocoa powder, cinnamon and salt. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the already mixed wet ingredients.

When completely mixed, you can stir in the chocolate shavings though I'm not 100% sure I even noticed these had been mixed in - so you could step this step if you'd like I think.

3. At this point it's helpful to turn the dough out onto plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour to firm the dough up. After refrigerating, take the dough out and roll some of the dough into a ball, rolling in sugar before putting it on your cookie sheet.

4. Press the back of a fork into the center of the cookie - especially if you want to sprinkle with jimmies, which otherwise, won't stick to the sugar coated outside of the cookie dough. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes.

I started by preheating my oven to 375 degrees and even just baking the cookies for 8 minutes, I burned the bottom of my cookies! I turned the oven down to 350 degrees for round 2. This is why it's important to do a small test round sometimes - but thankfully I did that for you already! I also decided to sprinkle with some chocolate jimmies but you could also top with a hershey's kiss or just leave them plain. I think I particularly liked these because I could really taste both the cinnamon and peanut butter - a nice combination with the chocolate in there too.