TWD - Peanuttiest Blondies

This isn't a nice way to begin, but I'm not a huge blondie fan. You have to add large amounts of something I like for me to get enthused about them. So I was a bit ambivalent when the November Tuesday with Dorie recipes were announced. Or maybe my ambivalence was because I learned what the recipes while we were here

...and knowing I would be home and not eating macarons (and having so many Deep Discussions about favorite ones) by the time I made them. I was going to make them Sunday, but I was having too much fun reconnecting with some of my Twitter buddies and one of them give me excellent advice on sourdough starters (thanks, Di!)

Monday morning, I woke up and I WANTED to bake. And it occurred to me, I'd missed my peeps. My dear coworkers, who eat anything and everything I bring in, regardless of how presentable or tasty it is (or isn't). I missed them. And though I wasn't exactly bubbling with joy about going back to work, I missed having an enthusiastic group of people who like eating what I bake.

None of this really matters. What does matter is that Nicole of Bakologie picked these blondies, and they were what helped me get my baking groove back. They were simple (except can I tell you how much I dislike chopping nuts that roll around? It's a lot.) Dorie's instructions were perfect as usual (does anyone else miss Dorie's careful, detailed instructions when baking other cookbooks?) A few observations:

• I have a gigantic jar of smooth peanut butter from Costco so I used that instead of chunky. I added a few more chopped peanuts to compensate.
• I recently came into a windfall of chocolate related to a future promotion (you're going to want to check back in a few weeks for that one), so I used some milk chocolate chips from my stash.
• Dorie says to bake these in a pan lined with foil, which you butter, and I resisted the urge to use parchment instead, which doesn't require buttering. This would be the perfect use for nonstick foil (I used heavy duty, since the foil also acts as a sling). You want the foil to extend far enough over the sides for you to lift the blondies out.
• Cut these into tiny bars as they are very rich. That won't stop some people from taking two, but one really is enough. Unless you're coming back to work after a two week vacation. Then it's OK to have two.

They were good! Not as good as my favorite brown butter blondies, but definitely not the usual boring blondie. I would make these again, happily, and maybe even do some substitutions to make it interesting.

Thanks, Nicole, for a tasty and easy pick. If you'd like the recipe, Nicole has it for you here.

Peanut Butter Criss-Crosses

Before we get on with the recipe for this week, have you seen Dorie Greenspan's new book, Around My French Table? You must check this book out. I want to make virtually every recipe I've seen. You can find it on Amazon here. Go ahead, I'll wait here while you're away.

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Fall baking is definitely on the menu for the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers. This week's recipe, peanut butter criss-cross cookies, was chosen by Jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine.

I have a love affair, a very unhealthy love affair, with peanut butter. I love it on toast, in cookies, brownies, sandwiches, with celery, spread on chocolate fèves, from a spoon. Yeah, baby. Especially that last one.

The rapture that I read on the Internet about Dorie's peanut butter cookies recipe got me very excited. There is lots of peanut butter in her recipe, plus bonus chopped roasted salted peanuts to heighten the peanut flavor. You roll the cookie dough in sugar before smashing it with a fork (which she brilliantly recommends you dip in sugar...no more cookies stuck to the tines of the fork).

The first time I made it, I doubled the recipe, and some semisweet chocolate chips fell into half of the batch. Both were well received, but the peanut butter cookie purists eschewed the chocolate chips (what?!? and I bake for these people?) So I made the recipe again. This time I made the recipe with chopped honey roasted peanuts and this time some bittersweet chocolate chips found their way into half of the recipe. I hoped the honey roasted peanuts would provide the crunch and pop of flavor they did in this torte. While my tasters liked them as much as the roasted salted peanuts batch, they couldn't discern the difference.

The other change I made was to reduce the baking time for the second batch. I found the full 12 minutes made the cookies a little dry and crumbly, and I wanted a chewier cookie. Baked for 11 minutes they were fully baked but perfectly chewy, just about ideal in my book.

Check out what the other TWD bakers thought here. And many thanks to Jasmine for picking a great recipe!