Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chips

Ever year on our way to Lake Chelan, everyone in the family has to stop at the Cle Elum bakery. They have these Italian cookies called torchetti that we all love as well as fresh doughnuts and other baked goods. My dad's favorite is Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookies. When my mom and I stop, we always get a dozen just for Dad (we tend to go before him). So for his birthday I decided I'd try to make them myself. I decided to use a basic peanut butter cookie recipe from the Betty Crocker Cookie Book and just add chocolate chips.

Peanut Butter Cookies (Betty Crocker's Cookie Book, pg. 78)

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup margarine or butter, softened
• 1/4 cup shortening (I just used butter again)
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose or whole wheat flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• (I also added some chocolate chips)

Directions

1. Mix sugars, margarine/butter, shortening, peanut butter, and egg. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours.
2. Heat oven to 375. Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. Place about 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten in crisscross pattern with fork dipped in flour. Bake until light brown, 9 to 10 minutes (because of my oven I discovered I had to reduce this by a couple minutes). Cool 2 minutes; remove from cookie sheet.

The only problem I had was when I was making the crisscross pattern. I didn't dip the fork in flour, thinking it would be fine if I didn't, and the dough just kept coming apart. I was somewhat successful.

Dad enjoyed them. He keeps thanking me for them. He also counted them so he'd know when Mom took one. Because he had them out when we had friends over for the Super Bowl (his birthday was the day before this year), a friend's toddler saw them and kept asking for one. So my dad finally gave in. The kid seemed to like it as well.