I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had an awesome Thursday! I made rugelach (Alice Medrich’s dough) with loads of different fillings -
apricot jam, bittersweet chocolate, ground coffee
cashew butter, almond extract, raspberry jam
raspberry jam, desiccated coconut
apricot jam, caster sugar, ground cloves + cinnamon
…in case you were wondering. (I’m also making that note for myself because they were DELICIOUS filling combos. Pat on my own back. woohoo)
and of course MAPLE PECAN PIE. Favourite dessert. HeeelllLO.
My mum (who p.s. made all the pretty ceramics I used in this post) also made peanut butter cookies dipped in chocolate and crushed walnuts….which is where the partial inspiration for these cookies came from!
I had been cutting a pomegranate in half last week and of course all the pomegranate juice went everywhere – I’m pretty sure I had some on my face – and some splashed into the salt bowl. It stained the salt a super pretty pink colour. Needless to say, when I saw it I dumped a bunch more pomegranate juice in because THAT PINK SALT IS BEAUTEOUS. And then I had to wrack my brains to think of a cool way to convince everyone else to make the salt by sprinkling it on stuff.
The stuff ended up being Peanut Butter Cookies and Chocolate – duh.
Also guys, it’s the FIRST OF DECEMBER tomorrow. And I think we all know what that means.
It will officially be the holiday season!
Non-stop ultra-warm jumpers, watching Love Actually, drinking pepperminty hot chocolate, scarves (so many scarves) and Christmas music for cooking/dancing/cycling. YEAH.
But also erm, cookies, or as Carey has put it ‘full-on holiday treat mode’ – agreed.
Winter baking is the best, because standing in front of an oven is ah-mazing when you’re cold. It means I don’t leave the kitchen for that 10-minute-ish cookie baking period so I don’t burn things! (I have a tendency to sometimes abandon things in the oven and then become ‘timer-deaf’. It isn’t good)
3 reasons (salt sprinkling, holidays, oven-hand-warmer) to bake cookies now. Okay yep, I didn’t need any more convincing than that.
The peanut butter cookies I made were slightly different to my mum’s – I halved the recipe, used butter instead of shortening and oat flour instead of all-purpose. I like how the oats gives them some nubbly texture and also a bigger protein/fiber boost. Mo’ health, mo’ cookies, you know it. Plus it also makes them conveniently wheat free so I can feed them to everyone I know, heh heh heeehhh.
But also I used baking powder instead of baking soda. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I hate using just baking soda in things like cookies. I can taste it so strongly, it grosses me out. I mean, there’s no acid for it to react with so you just end up with this yellow residue and weird flavour. Cookie let down, major town. The baking soda also normally makes things spread more, so because I used powder I got cute little plump cookies 
So seriously if the cookies haven’t convinced you to make the salt, it’s so gorgeous, you should just make it anyway. You can put it in a jar and gift it to people as is. It’s so SPARKLY and icy-looking. Ahhhh.
Either get pomegranate juice from when you cut a pomegranate in half, from crushing some pomegranate arils (seeds), or store-bought pomegranate juice.
Use a spoon or pastry brush to splatter a piece of parchment paper with a little pomegranate juice. Sprinkle a few table spoons of salt over parchment paper and use a fork to gently stir. Splash on a bit more pomegranate juice if needed. Stir until all the salt is coated. Spread out out carefully over the piece of parchment paper and leave to dry.
Once dried, store in a small jar or bowl.
http://www.topwithcinnamon.com/2013/11/chocolate-dipped-peanut-butter-cookies-with-pomegranate-salt-gf.html
You can use an equal volume of all-purpose flour if you want. If you are intolerant to gluten, make sure you use certified GF oats in this recipe.
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Cream together the first 6 ingredients until smooth. Stir in the oat flour. Scoop tablespoons of dough onto the lined cookie sheet, spacing them about 2-inches apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes until golden underneath and on the edges. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Melt (and temper if you want to) the chocolate. Dip one half of each cookie into the chocolate and place onto a piece of parchment paper. Sprinkle with some pomegranate salt (or normal flaky salt) and leave to set.
http://www.topwithcinnamon.com/2013/11/chocolate-dipped-peanut-butter-cookies-with-pomegranate-salt-gf.html
