Peanut Butter Cookies, Strawberry Conserve, and Bourbon Lemonade

Weekends are my favorite time for trying out new dishes - there is no better way to put off cleaning than to make fun things to eat. This weekend, I decided to try my hand at a few of the recipes I discovered over the past few days. The June 2011 issue of Bon Appetit arrived on Monday (how fortuitous!), and Smitten Kitchen's Vermontucky Lemonade entry made me want to get tipsy and make sweets all Saturday afternoon. I love any excuse to bake that doesn't involve me eating half of whatever it is I'm making, so I decided to make peanut butter cookies for Saturday night's Game Night. Then, I got excited when I saw strawberries at the farmer's market, so I decided I'd test out the strawberry conserve recipe in Bon Appetit. And what better way to offset the hours spent in a hot kitchen than to make a little (alcoholic) lemonade to cool you down? The lemonade was so good I had to make more for our friends that evening. I'm pretty sure people liked it - over 2/3 of the 750ml Wild Turkey 101 was gone by 11PM...

Peanut Butter Cookies
(adapted, only slightly, from Smitten Kitchen's recipe)


1 cup peanut butter (I used Trader Joe's creamy unsalted PB)
1 stick butter, softened
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk (I used skim)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 milk chocolate bars, chopped into squares (about 3.5 oz)
3/4 cup peanut butter chips

1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar, reserved on a plate for rolling the tops of the cookies

Preheat oven to 350F. In medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder & salt. Set aside.

In large bowl, blend butter and peanut butter at medium speed until light and creamy, about 4 minutes. Add the sugar and blend until mixture is almost smooth, about 2 minutes (I could never quite get the sugar to completely dissolve, but the cookies still turned out perfectly - so don't fret if you still see some granules). Add the egg and blend until combined. Add the milk and vanilla and blend to incorporate completely. Add the flour and mix until just combined - the batter will be crumbly, so watch out for the occasional flying object!

Stir in the chocolate and the peanut butter chips, mashing the batter together as you incorporate them (I found that a wooden spoon worked best for this). Using rounded teaspoonfuls, roll the batter into balls about an inch in diameter. Roll the tops of each ball in the reserved sugar and drop onto a cookie sheet. Smitten Kitchen says not to grease the sheet, but I'm always uncomfortable with ungreased cookie sheets, so I compromised and lined the sheet with wax paper. Using a fork, and your fingers to maintain the rounded form, mash the cookie slightly to flatten - but not too much, because it will spread a bit while it bakes. Be sure to keep 2-3 inches between each cookie to allow room for spreading.

Place the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 10 - 12 minutes. I found that the first batch needed about 11 minutes, but the subsequent batches took exactly 10. It may look like the cookies are underdone, but I promise that they are not! Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool on the sheet for 1-2 minutes. Transfer them to a cooling rack (and by "cooling rack" I mean "plate(s)") to cool completely.

Here's a terrible BlackBerry closeup of the finished product(s). The picture does not do them justice - they are so delicious!



Strawberry Conserve
(Respectfully borrowed from Bon Appetit's The Seasonal Cooks section, June 2011)

4 cups fresh strawberries (about 1 lb.), hulled & halved
3/4 cup superfine sugar (I actually used about 2/3 cup regular sugar)
Peel (with white pithe) of 1/2 lemon

Combine all ingredients in a heavy, wide pot. Cover; let sit at room temperature, stirring occasionally, for two hours. (The berries will ooze and the sugar will dissolve.)

Bring strawberry mixture to a simmer over medium heat. Cook, stirring gently, until strawberries are just tender, about 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer strawberries to 1 pint jar. Continue simmering liquid until it thickens into a syrupy consistency, 1-2 minutes. Discard lemon peel and pour syrup over strawberries; seal and let cool to room temperature. Chill for up to one month.

Cook's Note: I personally had a significant amount of additional liquid that did not fit into the pint jar, so I saved it in a separate container to use as strawberry syrup over pancakes or ice cream later.

Vermontucky Lemonade
(borrowed from Smitten Kitchen's recipe, May 14, 2011)

1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (I juiced about 7 ripe lemons with my hands and had about 1 1/4 cups)
2 1/2 cups warm water
1/2 cup maple syrup
bourbon (I used one shot of Wild Turkey 101 per glass)
lots of ice (I used 5 cubes per 16 oz. glass)

Whisk lemon juice and maple syrup together before adding the water, stirring constantly. Voila la citronnade!

Add ice cubes to the glass (4-5 will do). Pour bourbon over ice, and then add the lemonade. Stir once and serve.

This lemonade is so yummy I'm going to make it all summer long...alcoholic or not!

I wish I had some pictures to do the drink and the conserve justice. Maybe I'll update this post with additional pictures next time I make the recipes.