Peanut Butter Sweetheart Cookies

Last week a bunch of friends went out to celebrate Slesh and Will’s engagement.  I had a ton of fun seeing the girls and being out with everyone.

Old roomies!  I miss Wally World.  No offense Tim.

Anyways, Tim and I brought over wine and snacks for the pre and post-festivities, but I wanted to bake something as well.  I remembered when I was trying to decide what to bake Tim for Valentine’s Day, it was between the black forest cake I did end up making and peanut butter sweetheart cookies.  Since I still had all the ingredients on hand for the cookies, I thought they would be perfect.  Plus then I didn’t need an extra trip to the grocery store.

If you are looking for a sweet treat to enjoy this weekend, here you go!

Recipe adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction, makes 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients

• 1 stick of butter, softened
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup agave
• 1 large egg
• 3/4 cup natural unsalted peanut butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup almond meal
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 24 dark chocolate hearts

Directions

1. In a large bowl, mix the butter, brown sugar, and agave.
2. Mix in the peanut butter, then the egg, then the vanilla.
3. Slowly add in the dry ingredients and mix all together.
4. Let chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
6. Remove the dough from the fridge.
7. Roll dough into small balls and place on ungreased baking sheets.
8. Bake for 8-9 minutes.  The cookies may look undone, but that’s OK don’t bake any longer than this.
9. Press a chocolate heart into each cookie, then quickly place cookie sheets in the freezer so the warm cookies don’t melt the chocolate.  Tip — have your chocolate hearts unwrapped ahead of time! 
10. Let the chocolate set, then enjoy!

I’m happy my friends liked these!

Peanut butter and chocolate combined in ANY way is definitely a guilty pleasure of mine.  I think next time I make these, I would experiment with changing up some of the butter, brown sugar, or whole wheat flour amounts just to see how they’d turn out.  Thoughts?  Tips?

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Have a nice weekend everyone!