Knock Santa's Socks Off

Here's the deal - Santa Claus gets a LOT of milk and cookies on Christmas Eve. A LOT a lot. Combine that with the fact that he's been at it for the past eons and chances are that he isn't going to be impressed with your standard refrigerated cookie mix chocolate chip cookies.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure the jolly old elf won't complain if he finds a plate of boring old chocolate chip cookies at your house this year. 'A' for effort right? It's definitely not a coal-in-the-stocking-worthy offense.

I would like to give a whole generation dictionaries and library cards

But if you're asking for some really big ticket item, like a VitaMix or a boyfriend for Christmas (lolz), you're going to have to bring more to the table than the same overdone offerings that every little Timmy and sweet Sally on the street are bringing.

You're going to have to bring your A game.



Luckily, there's this magical portal of endless information called 'the internet.' In addition to being a great source of GIFs and other forms of procrastination, it contains more recipes than one could ever hope to make.

I've had mixed success with internet recipes, so these days I love looking at recipes that have been reviewed by someone other than the original poster - especially if they come with photos! And thus I've decided to start posting my experiences with recipes on here now and then.

Guess what? I found some cookies to really know Santa's socks off! Broma Bakery has an awesome recipe for Halfway to Heaven Peanut Butter Cookies.

What they look like on her site, with a fancy camera (I can just tell) and possibly some editing

My pre-Christmas Eve trial run of the cookies was a huge success. My friends and roommates raved about them and I loved them, too!

What the photos looked like when I made them (excuse the lighting - I made them well after dark. Still, not bad!

I didn't make any purposeful substitutions and pretty much followed the recipe to a T.

Pre-sandwiching

The only changes that I made were that I accidentally forgot to cream the sugar with the wet ingredients (I mixed it in with the flour, instead),

I used honey roasted peanut butter for the filling as well as the cookies (I'm a college student, aintnobodygottime for two kinds of peanut butter),

The filling (peanut butter and confectioner's sugar) mixed up in the container that the remaining peanut butter was in

I made the cookies a bit bigger than suggested and baked them a little longer (ask for big prezzies, give big cookies),

Mmmm...

and I pressed the cookies down with a fork, instead of my finger, to achieve the typical criss-cross peanut butter cookie look.

The cookies, pre-adding filling (okay, so they didn't really take the criss-cross pattern, it sort of baked out)

Haha, and that's what I call following a recipe to a T. Obviously I have some issues with following directions...

Anyway, the cookies were a huge success! They were as scrumptious on the second day as the first, in case you want to get your baking done the day before Christmas Eve, for whatever reason. I can't vouch for what they taste like after that, though, because the cookies didn't last that long!

Yum.

Do you have a recipe you want me to try out? Link to it in the comments below or email me at livinglearningeating AT gmail DOT com and I'll consider it!

Do you make the same cookies for Santa every year, or do you mix it up?

What are your favorite kind of cookies?