Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

These decadent Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies are for tomorrow night's Beatles Concert to benefit The Wednesday Community Meal.  

I made them by whipping up a double batch of my favorite recipe for Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies and then adding a 10-ounces of dark chocolate chunks. 

These cookies are rich and satisfying but it's still hard to eat just one as my husband and I can attest to. I finally had to put them into a metal tin and wrap the whole thing with plastic wrap to keep us from getting more. I need them to last for the concert!

Here's the recipe:

Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies

(makes 6 dozen 2-inch cookies)
2 2/3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/3 cup old-fashioned crunchy peanut butter
1 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
10 ounces dark chocolate chunks

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and sea salt.

In a large bowl, whip together the peanut butter and shortening. Add the sugars and beat until light and creamy. Add the egg and mix well. Stir in flour mixture. And, finally stir in the chocolate chunks.

A 1-inch scoop is a useful tool for getting even-sized balls of dough. Just scoop and then roll the dough in your hand and place it on the baking sheet.

Roll the dough into 1-inch balls and space them apart on a parchment lined baking sheet. Flatten the cookies by patten them down with your hand.

Bake the cookies for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.


 

Yellow Submarine Cookies

 

My Yellow Submarine Cookies are done and ready to be served at the upcoming Beatles Concert to benefit The Wednesday Community Meal.

I had to make a lot for the event so I smartly decided to keep the design simple. 

It took two days to make them. One to bake, outline and flood coat the cookies with yellow icing and one to add the details after the flood coat dried. I think they're pretty cute and I hope the Saturday's concert goers agree.

Here's how to make them.

With medium consistency yellow icing and a #1 tip, outline the cookies. Let the outline dry for 15 minutes before moving onto the next step.

With flood consistency yellow icing and a #2 tip, fill in the cookie. Use a skewer to help evenly distribute the icing and give the cookie a gentle shake to help the icing settle.

Let the flood coats dry completely before moving onto the next step. This takes overnight.

With medium consistency red icing and a #2 tip, add two line details.

Finally, add bright blue dots using medium consistency royal icing and a #2 tip. Wait for the royal icing to dry completely before serving or packaging.

 

Good Food But Few Guests

One of today's 216 meals - A pork enchilada, ham, rice and veggies.

We had a large group of energetic volunteers eager to work at today's Wednesday Community Meal but a surprisingly small number of guests. At the end of the two hour service, we'd served only 216 meals. Last Wednesday, the first week of July,  we served 245 and our numbers typically go up each week until the end of the month.

The lulls in today's service actually made me more tired and my fellow kitchen volunteers said the same was true for them. When we're really busy it's easier to keep our energy levels up, especially in the summer heat. Continually stopping and starting is more tiring.

The meal was a success though, we served every person who came to our door a well-rounded and delicious meal. The first guests in the door got ribs from Phil's Uptown Meat Market, rice and vegetables. Then it was onto corned beef, chicken, hot roast beef sandwiches, ham sandwiches, sweet and sour chicken and pork enchiladas.

The corned beef, roast beef and ham were donated by the Oregon Food Bank. They came already cooked and just needed to be sliced and heated for serving. High school volunteers Micah and my nephew Sam took on the task of slicing all the meat and they did a great job. I told them I appreciated their hard  work and that they are now officially qualified to seek work in a deli.

Sam slicing the roast beef.

Olivia whisked up a combo of mayo and mustard to put on the sandwiches.

We also served soup, salad and dessert. The soup was donated from Good Samaritan Hospital, the salads were made from lettuce donated by Springhill Organic Farm and the dessert was delicious cake donated by Trader Joe's.

Linda and Leah plating salads.

We All Want To Eat Yellow Submarines!

I've decided to make Yellow Submarine Sugar Cookies to serve at the upcoming Beatles Concert to support feeding the hungry in our community. This is going to be fun!

I have my submarine cookie cutter and am excited to get to work.

Stay tuned...

Beatles Benefit Concert

This coming Saturday, July 12, there will be a be a Beatles Concert featuring an all-star lineup of Portland musicians in the courtyard of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (147 NW 19th Ave, Portland, OR).

Admission to the concert is free but there will be an offering to benefit Trinity Hunger Ministries which supports the Wednesday Community Meal. It's a great opportunity to get out and enjoy great music while at the same time helping to feed the hungry in our community. I hope to see you there.

Here are the details: 

Let It Be: The Beatles Porchlight Concert

Saturday, July 12, 7:00 p.m., Trinity Courtyard
Come together for a porchlight concert set to the music of the world's most timeless band. The Trinity Alt.Liturgy Band and an all-star lineup of Portland musicians will perform The Beatles' songs of grace, transcendence, peace, justice and, most of all, love, love, love. The freewill offering benefits Trinity's hunger ministries.

Cookie Decorating Tip: Draw An Outline

Using a food-safe pen, I drew an outline of the bee onto these apple cookies before adding the royal icing. Having and outline to follow makes decorating so much easier.

Food Safe Pens are so helpful in cookie decorating. They can be used to add detail to small areas in lieu of royal icing, but I what I find myself using them most frequently for is drawing outlines of designs.

Drawing an outline to follow before adding the royal icing helps keep my stress level down and my designs much more consistent.

Practice drawing your design onto paper first to get the scale and look just right. If the design is intricate, you might want to actually cut a template that you can trace onto your cookies.

For the bee design on these apple cookies, the design was simple enough that I felt comfortable drawing it free hand.

It is essential that your base coat of royal icing be completely dry before drawing onto the cookie. You must be patient and not rush this step or believe me, you will be frustrated when your food safe pen breaks into the base coat.

It took 12 hours for the green base coat of icing to dry completely. Drying time varies. It depends on the humidity and the amount of royal icing needed to fill the cookie. The bigger the cookie, the longer the drying time. 

Here's how I made these custom Apple And Bee cookies for the summer gathering of a family whose last name is Appleby (get it?):

I outlined the apple cookies with medium consistency royal icing and a #2 tip.

After letting the outline dry for about 30 minutes, I filled the cookies with flood consistency royal icing and a #3 tip. I used the larger tip because the cookies are big and there was a lot of area to cover.

I used a scribe to evenly distribute the icing and then gave the cookie a gentle shake to help the icing settle.

After filling all of the cookies, I waited for them to completely dry before moving onto the next step. This took 12 hours.

I used a black food safe pen to draw an outline of the bee. The design was simple enough for me to do this free hand but if you are uncomfortable doing this, you can make a paper template to trace.

I added the outline to all of the cookies.

Using medium consistency black royal icing and a #1 tip, I traced and filled the head of the bee.

Using the same icing and #1 tip I traced the body and added two lines across it. I then used my scribe tool to ease the bottom of the body into a point. If you don't have a scribe tool, a skewer or toothpick would also work.

Again, using the same icing, I added the antenna.

I let the black icing dry for about 15 minutes and then filled the body section with medium consistency yellow icing using a #1 tip.

I worked until I had the body of the bee finished on all of the cookies.

Now it's time for the wings. I traced and filled the wing outline with medium consistency white royal icing using a #1 tip.

I finished the bee on all of the cookies, but I'm still not done.

The apples needed a brown stem.

And, they needed a green leaf. Wait for all of the royal icing to be completely dry before packaging or serving.

A Break From The Heat

I had to get a picture of the super high schoolers who volunteered today. Besides being big helps, they are nice and a lot of fun to be around. Thank you Nicholas, Sam, Eleanor, Micah, Ava and Sierra!

In the winter, The Wednesday Community Meal serves as a place for the homeless to escape from cold temperatures and warm up.

Today, the opposite was true. Guests enjoyed the food, but they also appreciated the break from the heat and the opportunity to cool off in our large dining room at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

Midway through today's service, a clean-cut female guest,  who looked to be about the same age as myself, came up to the kitchen window to say thank you for the food and hospitality. She told me that she's been homeless for a little over a year and just found out about the meal.

"I am so grateful that you do this," she said.

Volunteering at the weekly free meal and getting to know the guests has taught me not to take for granted the simple comforts in my life.

Having a home, food in the cupboard and a soft bed are blessings that I don't deserve any more than the next person. I don't know why I have them and others don't. Life is uncertain.

This is what I do know: Appreciating life's blessings, no matter how small, and doing my best to help others deeply enriches my life.

We served 245 meals today in addition to lots and lots of cups of cold lemonade.