Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

The crunchy peanut butter and dark chocolate chunks in this super easy peanut butter & chocolate chip cookies recipe will make it a new family favourite. The recipe comes from the children’s cookery book Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street by Felicita Sala. 

Pull up a chair and grab a plate!

My youngest has all the questions.

True story.

He’s 10, and he’s got the same natural curiosity about the world around him that I do. 

“Mum, why do bugs fly towards the light?”

“Why don’t they fly towards the sun, Mum?”

“Mum, can bugs go blind?”

You know, sometimes I’m really glad for the Amazon Alexa in our kitchen because there are a lot of questions, and sometimes I don’t have the answer. “Mum, how much does a Tesla cost?” – the car, not the coil.

Recently, one of his dinner table questions was centred around the use of butter in cooking. Does everyone cook with butter? All cuisines? How do they use butter in other countries?

(Sometimes even Alexa is stumped!)

Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street

This brings us to the timely release of Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street by Felicita Sala, published by Scribe UK, today, the 12th of September. Aimed at children between 3-10 this picture book come recipe book is all about getting kids cooking, learning about new cultures and celebrating community.

In this thoughtfully illustrated picture book, we’re taken on a tour of an apartment building, 10 Pomegranate Street, where someone is preparing a special dish to share with their neighbours. Mr Singh makes coconut dahl with his daughter, while Miss Ishida mixes ingredients for her oyako don.

Other recipes include baba ganoush, sole meunière and this peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies recipe.

For the curious, out of the 15 recipes in this book, only 4 use butter.

Peanut Butter & Choc Chip Cookies

This was one of the two recipes my son picked for us to make from the book right away; the other was sole meunière from France (both use butter). 

It was the little Tom Waits poster in the corner of the illustration that prompted me to make this recipe first. That and the fact that in a few days time I will be flying across the Atlantic to Georgia, USA where I will be visiting peanut farms and learning all about the production of American peanuts. A sort of blog recipe foreshadowing, so to speak.

Plus, peanut butter and chocolate are a marriage made in heaven!

Ingredients

• 100 grams crunchy peanut butter
• 100 grams softened butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 125 grams brown sugar
• 170 grams plain flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100 grams chocolate

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Instructions

1. Beat together the butter, peanut butter and vanilla until fluffy.
2. Beat in the egg.
3. Add the sugar, flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda.
4. Chop the chocolate into small chips and add to the mix.
5. Form the dough into a log shape about 5 cm in diameter. Wrap in greaseproof paper and chill for at least 2 hours.
6. Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Cut the log into 1 cm rounds and bake on a tray for 15 minutes until golden but still soft.

These cookies are remarkably easy to make, and I really like that they use chunky peanut butter instead of smooth. The chunks really add a nice crunchy texture to the cookie, while dark chocolate (use milk if you prefer) adds a nice bitter contrast. 

The perfect cookie for kids and grown-ups alike. I may have shared several of this batch with some girlfriends over coffee as we set the world to rights recently.

So what did my son think?

The book is a good cooking book with loads of palatable goods like the cookies that are shown here on this page. Now about the cookies, they are nice with a peanut crunch with the melting chocolate I would say that they’re best straight out the oven but wait till they are warm, not hot. – Holden, age 10.

About the Author

Felicita is a self-taught illustrator and painter. She graduated in Philosophy from the University of Western Australia and has illustrated many picture books, as well as a huge amount of illustrated food for magazines and newspapers.

As a child, Felicita was a super picky eater, but now she loves to eat and cook as many different foods as she can from all around the world. Some of her favourite foods include Thai green curry, bitter broccoli from Naples and Nutella.  Felicita lives in Rome with her husband and their daughter Nina, whose favourite food is Green Rice.

Book: Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street
Author: Felicita Sala
ISBN: 978-1911617983
Publication Date: 12 September 2019
Cover: Hardback 
RRP: £12.99 (UK) 

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Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary received a complimentary copy of Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street. This is not a paid post.