Well, hello you midnight bakers! If you are like me then you know how sometimes the baking urge just hits you. Time or circumstances don’t matter. Neither does it that every one else is sleeping. I used to bake all the time few years ago but now it’s so rare for me that every time I want to bake I just go for it. So last night was one of those times. I really wanted to make cookies and to use peanut butter. We had half of a salted chunky peanut butter jar left and as we really don’t like to use that one on snacking (Natural peanut butter and apples is a heaven in your mouth!) I thought I could get rid of that.
Two golden rules of midnight baking
1. Be quiet
Be sure that you aren’t making unnecessary noises which could wake up people (and dogs) living with you. That means you can’t use electric mixer or microwave so you have to really do things by hand. Also you want to use soft materials like wooden spatulas to avoid clangor. Nothing is as fun as super silent secret baking!
2. Bake something that doesn’t take too much time or require brain work
If you are baking in the middle of the night you probably are a bit tired. At least your brain isn’t working the brightest so maybe go for a recipe that you know well and have made numerous times or then just toss ingredients together like I did last night. I have a good sense of what goes into cookies so I didn’t really have to use my brain. Yay!
Cookie time!
So, what did I bake?
I made chewy peanut butter cookies which turned out surprisingly well. The second batch burned a little bit as I was too tired and too occupied in Pinterest to take them out of the oven in time (remember what I told you about easy and quick recipe!) but the firs batch was all good. If you want to make these too I have figured out the recipe I used.
Oh, so quiet chewy peanut butter cookies (makes about 25)
100 g butter
1 dl sugar
1,5 dl peanut butter
3/4 dl milk
1 egg
4,5 dl whole wheat flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 tbs vanilla sugar or vanilla extract
Whisk together butter, peanut butter and sugar with a wooden spatula.
Stir in the egg. When it’s well mixed blend in milk. If you use vanilla extract add it now and mix well.
In a separate bowl mix 1 dl flour and baking powder. If you use vanilla sugar add it to the flour mixture.
Stir the flour mixture to the batter and add the rest of the flours in little by little paying attention to the batter thickness.
Use two spoons to take balls of the batter and place those on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
Bake in preheated oven in 175°C for 20-25 minutes.
So easy yet so tasty! Have a lovely start for your week and don’t stay up too late for baking!
Cheers,
Janina
