Red Curry Peanut Butter Cookies

YES! I think I've finally crafted my signature recipe.

Yayayyayaya!!!

These were inspired by the Green Curry Banana Bread my roommate Patricia brought home from Momofuku Milk Bar. The bread was brilliant, and on my way home today I was thinking about a way to spice up the peanut butter cookies I wanted to make, and my mind drifted to the half jar of red curry paste I had left... fate was sealed.....

OK, so the recipe is definitely an approximate, but just try it please!!! I want to see how other people's comes out! Mine came out perfectly spiced, chewy, soft, sweet, salty, spicy, ah. Just wonderful.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Self Rising Flour (this is what i had at the time, YOU can just use regular plus some baking soda. same goes for the whole wheat...)

just shy 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour

2 Eggs

1 Cup Brown Sugar

1 Cup Peanut Butter (I recommend using the conventional bad-for-you PB, just because it contains the right texture and the right amount of salt and sugar... but if you DO use a more natural peanut butter, let me know how it works!)

1/3-1/2 Cup Butter, room temp (I didn't have quite enough to make a whole stick!)

1 tsp to 1 tbsp Red Pepper Flakes or Cayenne Pepper or Hot Paprika or something SPICY

2 oz red curry paste (1/2 of the small "Thai Kitchen" jars)

a few drops of red food coloring, or more, just for fun (quite optional)

Mix peanut butter, curry paste, spicy spice of your choice, butter, and sugar with an electric hand mixer. Add two eggs one at a time. Add the flours slowly until combined. You will have a very greasy, sticky dough. Put it in the freezer! Put a fork and your baking sheet in the freezer as well.

Here's where it gets a little time consuming, but just taking the time to do these steps will make this all much easier. Take the dough and pan out of the freezer and roll ping pong sized balls. Give a good amount of space. I was only cooking eight at a time on a large cookie sheet (they cook quickly). Once the balls are spaced on the sheet stick it back in the freezer for a few minutes. Then, quickly take the fork and press down on each ball, creating the signature peanut butter cookie cross! Bake at 350 degrees for between 3-6 minutes. Just check. Take them out when they look JUST done. Let cool for a few and then place on a cooling rack. Put the pan back in the freezer and a few minutes later repeat all steps until you have exhausted your dough.

Then eat one.

Prepare for awesomeness.

-R

Soft Molasses Spice Cookies

After coming across this recipe, I decided to adapt it to my own tastes. If I were cute, I'd call them pantry cookies for obvious reasons: you use many things that sit unused in your pantry to make them, namely: autumnal spices, jars of sweet things, oats, and brown sugar. I would bet that most households have these things lying around, unused.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Regular Unbleached Flour

1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour (obviously not necessary)

2 packets Plain Flavor Instant Oatmeal

3/4 Teaspoon Baking Soda

Spices:

(Here's the deal. I didn't measure my spices, but I put a LOT of spices in. Here they are in descending order of the amount I put in.)

Cinnamon

Ginger

Allspice

Nutmeg

1/4 cup Blackstrap Molasses

1/4 cup Honey

A little less than a block of Plugra Unsalted Butter

1 cup Brown Sugar

1 egg

WARNING: This cookie dough looks like the consequences of eating too much Indian Food

WARNING: The way this dough tastes (as in, AMAZING) may entice you to eat the consequences of eating too much Indian Food. Don't do it.

Let's begin!

In one bowl mix the dry ingredients, without sugar. Good. Now cream the butter and sugar. Good. Now add the egg, honey, and molasses to the butter and sugar and blend! Good. Now add the dry ingredients to the wet slowly until you get what looks like a giant's toilet. Good. Taste it, if you dare. It's heavenly.

Now, the hard part. The dough is really sticky, and even though I'm usually too impatient, I DID roll it up in plastic wrap and stuck it in the freezer. So, you do that too. About an hour later, take it out and begin to roll ping pong sized balls of dough. Dip the tops in more brown sugar or big crystals of raw sugar and place on a lightly buttered baking sheet. If you have pecans, or better yet, CANDIED pecans, please push one into the center of the cookie! I wish I had them. Bake for only about 5-7 minutes at 375 or so and don't overbake! Try to use your best judgement here, you really want to take them out when they are JUST cooked.

Let cool and enjoy. Good with a mug of warm milk.

-R

Chocolate Disaster Cookies with Salted Caramel

I baked without a recipe, and beginner's luck granted me a success!

I still christen these chocolate disaster cookies, because there's something very unruly and chaotic about them, and I think they look like a black hole.

The recipe went something like this

I melted four whole squares of semi sweet bakers chocolate with 1/3 of the european butter rectangles. In another bowl I combined 1/2 cup of brown sugar with 1/2 cup of regular unsweetened cocoa powder, one egg, almond extract, vanilla extract, and then I'm pretty sure I added a bit more sugar. Brown sugar, ps, for this whole recipe. When the chocolate and butter is melted together, pour all of that into the other bowl and mix well. Then add about 1 cup of regular flour and 1 cup of self rising flour, mix well, and incorporate lots of chocolate chunks. Then make a caramel sauce by not knowing what to do, so just throwing butter, light brown sugar, and milk in a pan and hoping for the best. Then, when you think it won't work, just start pouring a bit of that into the cookie batter, because you don't know what else to do. Start to form huge cookies on a baking sheet and create a well in the middle. Spoon a bit of the caramel into the well. Bake these cookies at an unspecified temperature, since your oven dial doesn't include numbers (350?), and take them out in about 10-15 minutes.

Then look at them and decide that you may as well pour the remaining caramel sauce all over them and then sprinkle sea salt on top.

Please wait for them to cool a bit before transferring them to a wire rack, and then let them cool completely before eating. They will fall apart if you do not heed my warning.

The cookies are incredibly rich and the salted caramel topping is a bit crunchy, but mostly chewy, and you cant beat the little salty lick you get as an after taste.

Next time, I think I would make them perfectly round and small and press a hole in the middle with my thumb. I would then fill that with the hot caramel, and wait until they were cooled completely to drop a few huge crystals of sea salt on top. I think there might actually be a next time for these babies!

-R