Dipped + Crisp Peanut Butter Cookies

Let’s talk cookies.

Big, cripsy peanut butter cookies. Semisweet chocolate. Sprinkles.

I’ll admit something— I was never big on peanut butter cookies.

The flavor was never appealing to me. The texture was a little too goopy for my taste— I would eat a soft cookie, but not a grease ball. Cafeteria cookies left me with bad memories, and homemade and bakery versions were never as good as I imagined them to be.

Leave it to Joy the Baker to convert me into a peanut-butter-cookie-lover. Every time I’m on Joy’s website, I want to make every single thing I see. And if I had time to, I would. The even better thing is that every recipe of hers I’ve tried has turned out perfect, often better-than-perfect. Unexpected flavor combinations turn out to be surprisingly satisfying. Techniques are nailed down with detailed descriptions. Proportions of flour, butter, and sugar are on the mark. I end up making recipes I never thought I’d want to try, and loving them.

In fact, these are Joy the Baker’s Dipped + Crisp Peanut Butter Cookies, turned GIANT and topped with sprinkles.

This is a batch of warm peanut butter cookies, just out of the oven. They’ve been rolled in sugar, crosshatched with a fork, and baked until golden brown. They set into crispy, crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth goodness.

Trust me, these are like no other peanut butter cookie you’ve had before.

Homemade Pumpkin Butter

It’s that time of year again. And I am one of those people that gets way too excited for the holidays.

I’ve been listening to Christmas music on Rdio, and it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet. I’ve started making mental lists of fun winter activities I want to do— the people I want to see, the places I want to visit. I’ve been looking out for the best winter store displays, and wearing flannel and sweaters like they’re going out of style. (This is odd, of course, because I live in Berkeley, California. The weather rarely drops below 55 this time of year.)

But, of course, it’s too early for holiday cheer. Today we pull back. This is a recipe that feels appropriate in November— it’s a real fall treat. It’s something that you eat as the weather grows colder, but doesn’t quite work once Christmas and New Year roll around.

Unless, of course, you just love pumpkin that much. Nothing wrong with that.

Weekend Things

{image from jenna fry}

Today I’m sharing some of my favorite links from around the web, because a food blog never has to be just a food blog. I’d like Kitchen in the Hills to be just as fun as it is informative, and just as much about conversation as it is about good food. In that lively spirit, I bring you a weekend post!

It’s been another crazy busy week over here, and all I want is to slow down, relax, and stop talking about how busy I am. Perhaps the key is to do less with more focus? Sigh. All I really want is for someone to take me skiing in the mountains and put a mug of hot chocolate in my hands. But we make our own luck, right?

Simple Apple Pecan Crisp

Let’s talk crisp. Apple crisp.

Possibly the most under-loved of fall desserts, but one of the homiest, tastiest, and easiest to pull together.

Do you ever have those days when you feel like you’re running around like crazy, switching from one task to the other, working long hours— only to look at your to-do list and find that nothing’s actually done? I’ve been having a lot of those days lately. Days when there isn’t a lot of leftover time to make a fancy dinner, or an elaborate recipe to blog about.

It was on one of those days that I made this apple crisp. I wanted to stress-bake, had half the amount of time a batch of cookies or a pound cake would take me, and a refrigerator filled with apples rapidly losing their crunch. This is real life. So I turned to something easier, something that was more approachable and incredibly simple.

Sometimes you need simple. Sometimes you need an apple crisp.