Double White Chocolate and Pretzel Peanut Butter Cookie

When I lived in NYC I used to have baking days.  Usually they would have a theme.  My favorite was fall day where we would bake all things to do with the fall.  So when I found out my new friend Meg liked to bake, we decided to have a cookie baking day.  With the craziness of the wedding quickly approaching I have had no time to bake (hence the lack of blog entries… and the lack of cookies in my freezer).  I told Meg that I had no time to pick out recipes so she sent me a list of recipes she had been dying to try.  She found this great site called the Picky-Palate where this woman creates all of her own recipes for picky eaters.  I have tried to create a recipe from scratch before, but have had little luck.  I’d much rather take someone’s recipe and tweek it to my liking.  But this blog is filled with really fun, creative recipes to try.  For our baking day we picked the Double White Chocolate and Pretzel Peanut Butter Cookie and the Cookies and Cream Cookie (featured in the next blog post).

As any of my friends know my favorite thing in life is peanut butter and chocolate.  But peanut butter and white chocolate?  This was new to me.  I have never mixed peanut butter and white chocolate, but I do love chocolate covered pretzels.  So if chocolate goes well with pretzels and peanut butter, how much could white chocolate change the picture?  I mean chocolate is chocolate! 

I also was really excited about the sweet and salty aspect.  The only thing I forgot was white chocolate is sweeter than dark chocolate.  And these cookies have a double dose of white chocolate so they are sweet to say the least!  Maybe a little too sweet for my liking.  I think if I were going to make them again I would cut back on the white chocolate to decrease the sweetness.  Now that I think about it, I think if I were going to make these again I would use dark chocolate instead of white and make a peanut butter cookie with chocolate chips and pretzels.

But I’m getting off topic.  I liked these cookies… didn’t love them, but am glad I tried them.  The pretzels added the salty/sweet flavor that I love.  They also added a nice crunch (you could even have the pretzel pieces a little bigger). And all being said the white chocolate was yummy.  Eating the cookies on the second day they have dried out a bit.  They aren’t that chewy texture that I love, but they have the fun factor of pretzels in a cookie, and some days its just fun to try something different.

Double White Chocolate and Pretzel Peanut Butter Cookie

(makes about 3 dozen cookies)

1 stick softened butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 cup white chocolate chips, to melt

1 1/4 cups creamy peanut butter (reserve 2 tablespoons to add to melting white chips)

1 large egg

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup broken pretzel pieces

1 cup additional white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Crush pretzels and set aside (we used the back of a ladle to smash them into pieces... but you can use whatever you can find that will do the trick).  Cream the butter and sugars together and set aside.  Then using a double boiler, melt the cup of white chocolate chips with the 2 Tbsps of peanut butter.  Add this melted mixture to the creamed butter and sugar mixture.  Once that is beaten add the rest of the peanut butter, egg and vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients:  flour, baking soda and salt.  Slowly add this mixture to the peanut butter mixture and cream together.  Stir in the pretzel pieces and the rest of the white chocolate chips.  

With a cookie scoop form balls and then press down each cookie to about 1/2 inch thickness.  Sprinkle each cookie with a dash of kosher or sea salt.  Bake for 12-15 minutes or until edges turn slightly brown.  Let cool 10 minutes on the baking sheet before removing to a cooling rack.