Grandma's Secret Peanut Butter Cookies

Grandma's Secret Peanut Butter Cookies
Secret Recipes revealed Vol. 1

These were always my favorite cookies that my grandma made when I was growing up. I would beg my mom to make them all of the time.  I have fond memories of my mother making them for play tea time with my dolls.  Why am I releasing my grandma's 'secret recipe'? I guess it's because I would rather have everyone enjoy what I grew up enjoying. 

The peanut butter cookie itself is very versatile, and there are a lot of different cookies you can make using this peanut cookie dough base. I've got some excellent ideas (in picture form) of things that you can do with this cookie dough.  Or, if you like you can just eat the cookie the way it is.

I really wanted to get started making cookies because the holidays are coming up, and I wanted to get a head start for what I was going to make to give this year.

My little helper was taking his daily nap while I was making these, but I'm sure that he will love what he wakes up to!!

Grandma Cruden's Peanut Butter Cookies

1 Cup Creamy peanut butter
1 Cup Butter
3 Cups All- purpose flour
3/4 Tsp. Salt
1/2 Tsp. Baking Powder
1 Cup Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
2 1/4 Tsp Vanilla

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Baking Time: 10 minutes
Clean Up Time: 5 minutes
Yields: 5 dozen cookies


Preheat Oven to 375 Degrees

1. Mix dry ingredients together: Flour, Salt, and Baking Powder

2. Cream together Peanut Butter and Butter

                    3.  Mix in Brown Sugar. Beat in Eggs and Vanilla.

4.  Slowly add dry ingredients to creamed mix.

5. Shape dough into 1" balls. Bake at 375 for 8 to 10 minutes (mine took 10 minutes)

As I mentioned before there are a lot of different variations that you can do with this dough. This is what I did for this batch.

Variation 1: Roll dough into balls. Press top with fork two times so that it makes a tic- tac- toe  mark on the top. You can either leave the cookies the way they are or sprinkle the top with cinnamon sprinkles or white sugar granules

End Product...

Variation 2: Indent top of cookie with thumb and fill with Jelly. This cookie may take a minute longer to bake.

End product...

Variation 3: Bake cookies and let cool. Melt 6 oz of Semi Sweet Chocolate with 1/3 cup Evaporated Milk and 2 cups Confection's Sugar. Dip cookie in chocolate and then in nuts.

(Sorry, pictures soon to come)

Also, for a little bit of a different flavor to your peanut butter cookie you can add just a little bit of cinnamon to the dough.

Be sure to catch my blog tomorrow! I making a awesomely fun kids meal. It will make you smile for sure. :)

I hope that you all really have fun baking this recipe. Let me know what you think!

One Love,

Virginia

Shepard's Pie

Shepard's Pie
A nice way to dress up your hamburger tonight

Oh man! Another comfort food recipe! What can I say? It's that time of the year where I just want to stay inside where it's nice and warm, and watch the rain pour over the autumn colored leaves.  This recipe has a very rich flavor and is sure to keep you warm and full all evening!

It was quick and simple. The ingredients were very inexpensive, and the end product had a lot of servings- a whole pie worth of servings!!

Alex really wanted to help so I let him decorate the top after it was done. Check out the pictures at the end of the post for the finished Alexander masterpiece.

Shepard's Pie

2 Cups of Mashed Potatoes

1 Lb Ground Beef

2 Cans of vegetables- your choice

1 pkt of brown gravy

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

1. Brown meat in pan. 

2. Prepare packet of brown gravy as recommended.

3. Add vegetables and gravy to meat. Mix well.

4. Push mixture into pan.

5.  Cover with Mashed Potatoes. If the mashed potatoes are more creamy rather than stiff, then they will spread over the hamburger mix better. Baked uncovered for 20- 25 minutes.

After it is baked- Enjoy. I was really nervous if my little man would eat this or not, so I put freshly shredded cheddar cheese on the top of it as soon as it came out of the oven.  I also let him decorate it with his toys.  He especially loved the toy part!

We had to really stick the little guy deep in the middle to get him to stand up. He would kind of start leaning, and little man would go ooohhhhh noooo mama!!

I hope you all enjoy!

One Love,

Virginia

Chicken Creole Bake

Chicken Creole Bake
A more healthful way to get the taste of stuffed peppers

It really tastes quite similar to stuffed peppers, but has the substitute of chicken instead of ground beef. Ground beef is a red meat; and is not only bad for your heart, but is also bad for the environment.  This is a wonderful comfort food. The heart burn alert isn't really bad on this one two. For heart burn, I would give it a 2 out of 5 (1 being the least, 5 being the most heartburn.)
When I finished making this, I realized that this is actually a dish that my mother made all of the time.  The name 'creole' really threw me off a little bit as well as the name 'bake'. 

Chicken Creole Bake

1 lb Chicken breast cubed
1 Envelope onion- mushroom soup
2 1/4 Cup boiling water
1 Can Diced tomato
1 Cup White rice
1 Cup Green pepper

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Clean Up Time: 10 minutes

Preheat oven to 450.

1. Bake chicken 30 minutes uncovered. Cubed when cooked

2. Reduce heat to 350 degrees. Mix Onion- Mushroom soup with water.

3. In a medium bowl, mix soup base, tomato, rice and green pepper.



4. Combine chicken, and all other ingredients together. Bake covered for 35 minutes.Juice will absorb slightly while it stands.

This was pretty good. It was really a great comfort food. It brought me back to being 5 years old again.  My mom used to make this all the time once it started to get cold outside.  Alex liked it, but he really likes tomatoes. 

Even though this is healthful there are some substitutes that you can make to make it a prime grade A healthy meal.  Here are my suggestions: There is a soup base that contains slightly higher sodium content than I like, but has such a rich flavor. You can substitute this with a low sodium choice. You can also substitute white rice for brown rice. Brown rice is actually a wonderful array of nutrients and vitamins.  White rice is not bad for you, but the nutrients have been bleached out similar to white bread.

I hope you all enjoy. Sorry for this short post I have been feeling a little bit under the weather.

One Love,

Virginia