Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

There is no better combination than peanut butter and chocolate. It’s a proven fact.

I would also like to say that chocolate chunks > chocolate chips. Fact. Just call me the Chocolate Encyclopedia. Or the Chocolate Whisperer. I like the sound of that. You can picture me sitting in my kitchen whispering sweet nothings to my chocolate.

In college, my friends referred to me as the Musical Theatre Lexicon. I guess you could say when something’s important to me, I spend a lot of time with it. Like chocolate. And peanut butter.

I made these for my wonderful friend Emily’s birthday. Then I spent too much time taking pictures of them and was late to her party. Story of my life. The cookies were so good though. Like, really reallllllly good, so I like to think they made up for it 😉

You know what’s REALLY hard??? Not eating all the birthday cookies you baked for your friend. Especially when they are so gooey it’s practically like biting through a slightly crunchy shell into hot cookie dough with rich, bold dark chocolate pouring out from the inside. Not eating all the cookies = true friendship.

I’d had my eye on doing some chocolate chunk cookies for a while now. I recently read a post on making the perfect chocolate chip cookies, and the two things that stood out were that you should use more than one type of chocolate to keep the taste buds interested, and always very lightly salt the dough before it goes into the oven–not for the “salted cookie” effect, but just a tiny bit to contrast the sweetness and bring the most flavor out of the cookie, so that’s what I did. The result? Cookie heaven.

 

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

yield 1 dozen (these are BIG cookies)

• 1 1/4 cups gluten-free baking blend (or white whole wheat flour)
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbs corn starch
• 1/2 cup apple butter
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 3/4 cup turbinado sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 cup water (+ corn starch = egg replacement)
• 4 oz good quality dark chocolate, chopped into large chunks (I used a chili dark chocolate and an espresso dark chocolate, but any chocolate would be delicious)
• sea salt for topping

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and corn starch. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the apple butter, peanut butter, sugars, and vanilla until smooth. Add water, followed by flour mixture and beat thoroughly. Fold in chocolate chunks. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Use a large cookie scoop (or your hands) to drop dough onto prepared cookie sheet. Lightly sprinkle the top of dough with sea salt.
4. Bake for 14-18 minutes until just golden. Do not overbake. Let cookies stand on sheet for 2-3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.