Trim Healthy Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
One of my all-time favorite things for the holidays are peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses on top. Well, I should say Brach’s candy stars on top because that’s how my Mom made them growing up, but these days I see Hershey’s kisses a lot more.
The tricky thing about that of course is that the last I checked neither cookies nor Hershey’s kisses would fall into the category of "on-plan" food. Something about mixing carbs and fat. So I had a real conundrum on my hands.
I talked to my Mom about her recipe for making these cookies and I found it was super simple, sugar, peanut butter, and eggs. My wife told me that the majority of the time you can just substitute gentle sweet 1:1 for sugar and you have a recipe. So I tried it, and it worked! Almost... The first batch wasn't as sweet as I liked, because I used sugar-free peanut butter. The next batch I upped the sugar and it came out perfect.
Ingredients
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1 standard Jar of Creamy No Sugar Added Peanut Butter
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1 Cup of THM Gentle Sweet*
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2 Large Eggs
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2 Bars of THM Chocolate* or other on-plan chocolate
Supplies
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Large mixing bowl (2-quart size works for me)
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Rubber or Silicone spatula
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Fork
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1 Cup Measuring device
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Non-stick spray, I prefer coconut oil spray
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Standard Cookie Sheet
Cooking Instructions
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Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
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Use the spatula to dump out the peanut butter into the mixing bowl, try to get as much of the can as possible not to waste any.
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Use the measuring device to get 1 Cup of THM Gentle Sweet* dump that in the mixing bowl
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Crack the eggs and dump them into the mixing bowl. Pro-tip if you crack the eggs into the measuring device you can get any shells out before you dump them in the mixing bowl
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Use the fork to stir the whole mixture in the bowl. At first, it’s going to be the consistency of kind of runny peanut butter and look sticky. The more you stir the more it will take on the consistency of play-do.
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When you think you’ve got it right flip the whole ball of dough upside down because sometimes the bottom won’t be mixed well.
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Mix in any sticky parts you find into the center.
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Next, you’ll form round balls of dough a little smaller than a golf ball. My Mom always used flour to keep it from sticking to her hands, but that doesn’t work here that whole carbs and fat thing. So I spray my hands with cooking spray to keep the dough from sticking.
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Spray the cookie sheet with non-stick spray
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Place the balls about two fingers apart on the cookie pan with two fingers from the edge too. Depending on the size of your pan you’ll get two or three in a line. Then just lay them out to fill up the pan. With some practice, I found that one batch of dough will fit on one of the restaurant-style cookie sheets. If you have smaller pans you can put two in the oven at the same time.
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Put the first pan in the top rack and others going down from the top and set the timer for 10 minutes.
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After 10 minutes they should be a little browned and cracked in places.
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Take the top tray out first, set on hot pads,
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Push a piece of THM Chocolate* into the center of each ball. That will flatten the ball a bit and cause the chocolate to melt.
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After the first tray has chocolates you can get the lower tray out which should be just about right for the extra cooking time on the center rack.
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You need to let them sit and cool for a good hour for everything to harden up.
One last note, My 18 year old son loves this recipe because it's super easy to make and it's something he can eat with his milk allergy. He just flattens the cookies before they go into the oven to make more traditional peanut butter cookie without the chocolates.
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