Chocolate and Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

This is another one of my treats I make for Synergy, a recycling and volunteering club that meets once a week. The club flyer proclaims that there is food at the meetings, but when I went, there wasn't! So I did my best to remedy that by promptly bringing in pumpkin chocolate chip muffins to the next meeting.

These cookies were born from the mixed occurence of a craving for dark chocolate brownie batter and seeing my dog lick up peanut butter from her toy (one of those rubber thingies you put treats in and your dog tries to lick out.)
The chocolate cookies are absolutely divine on their own and if you're just going to make those, then only bake for 8-9 minutes (these overbake easily); if you're making sandwich cookies you're going to want them a bit drier and more biscuity so bake for 9-10 minutes.

Chocolate. Peanut butter. Heaven. ;p
Enjoy!

RECIPE: (from food.com; makes about 36 cookies)
*1 1/4 cups butter or margarine
*2 cups sugar (I used 1 cup)
*2 large eggs
*2 teaspoons vanilla extract
*2 cups flour
*3/4 cup unsweeted cocoa powder
*1 teaspoon baking soda
*1/2 teaspoon salt
*About 1 cup peanut butter
*If you're making these on their own, add nuts or chocolate chips or whatever you want. Have fun with it!

PREPERATION:
1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2.) Mix together butter, eggs, sugar, and vanilla
3.) Mix in the dry ingredients
4.) Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet
5.) Bake for 8-9 minutes being very careful not to overbake; 9-10 minutes if you want them hard and biscuity.
6.) Set cookies out to cool on a wire rack
7.) After cookies are completely cool, place a dollop of peanut butter on the center of a cookie, top with another cookie and press down lightly to form an oreo-like sandwich!

Nutella brownies

Ah... Nutella...
Can you say that it's like the oreo of chocolate hazelnut sauces in a jar? I have quite a flamboyant love affair with this hazelnutty chocolate sauce. Over the years, I've experimented with brand new jars of Nutella and various results; peanut butter and nutella swirled together with peanuts and marshmallows and crumbled grahmn crackers, nutella french toast, nutella cupcakes, nutella brownies, nutella and a spoon. This heavenly delight is one of my many vices, along with Gossip Girl novels, Chanel, and anything and everything chocolate.

Okay, okay, I get it- I guess I live a mostly hedonistic lifestyle where I give in to the majority of my cravings. But I deserve that after all those hours of tennis and having to stay awake through first period.

These brownies come out super moist, and the hazelnut taste of the nutella balances everything out perfectly. I like to put some sort of topping on it to add some crunch and break up the monotony. The original recipe, which I think I got from my friend's mom and have seen on countless websites, calls for 1/2 a cup of nutella, but my brownies didn't come out as fudgey as I wanted them at first, so I ended up adding more nutella and it turned out way more dense- yum!


RECIPE:
*3/4 cup of nutella, or just 1/2 if you're going to add instant coffee powder
*1 teaspoon instant coffee powder (optional)
*1 egg
*5 tablespoons flour
*1/2 cup chopped peanuts to top, or any kind of topping you would like- nuts, chocolate chips, cranberries (optional)

PREPERATION:
1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees farenheit
2.) Mix together the nutella and egg
3.) Add in the flour and instant coffee powder
4.) Spoon into greased mini-muffin or cups and sprinkle the peanuts
5.) Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until you can put a toothpick through the center and it comes out clean