Peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies

Today we're going to Brussels. We are going there to celebrate my sister's graduation and to visit my 'brother-in-law's' (my sister's boyfriend) place. He's a teacher in Brussels and has a place there while my sister is still at home. Most of the times they see each other during the weekends and once a week, when he has a day off. 

To celebrate, we're visiting a Chagall exhibition and are going to eat out in the Matonge area (a neighbourhood in Brussels where there live a lot of people of African/Congolese descend).  

And because we're visiting his place, we cannot go without taking something with us for him. So I baked some cookies. And not just any kind of cookies. My sister is a chocolate cookie fanatic and both of them love to have peanut butter on their bread. So combining these two makes peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies :)

For inspiration, I looked at some recipes and the one on Lovin' from the oven looked good. The pictures looked simply yummy. 

To make these I made a few changes though. I didn't use any milk nor baking soda. Just because the cookie dough seemed creamy enough to add milk and I don't have baking soda. A last change I made was using a real bar of good Belgian chocolate instead of using chocolate chips. Why you may ask? Even though you still have to cut the bar up yourself, I like to know what kind of chocolate is in my cookies. When using a bar I like to eat myself, I know it will be good. Chocolate chips are more of a baking good than a delicacy. And with the good Belgian chocolate around, why not use that right away? 

Because of these changes and the size of my cookies, mine took a while longer to bake too. 

Ingredients:
- 113 grams butter
- about 6 big spoonfuls of peanut butter (same volume as butter)
- 100 grams light brown sugar
- 100 grams granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 155 grams all purpose flour
- 100 grams dark chocolate bar (chopped up)

How to:
Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C.
Combine the butter, the vanilla extract, the peanut butter and both sugars until they form a creamy dough. Add the egg and combine well. 
Then add the flour and the baking powder slowly (I did this in 3 batches, just to make sure everything was mixed in well).
Lastly, add the chocolate and mix. 
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and make balls of the dough you just made (I used a table spoon and made balls of the heaping spoonfuls of dough). I recommend using two baking sheets to be sure the cookies are well spaces. They don't really spread much though.

Bake the cookies for a few minutes until you see the balls 'melt' down a bit. Then take a spatula and press the balls down so they are about 1 cm thick.

Bake them further for another 10 minutes or until they feel slightly firm (they firm up while cooling) and are golden brown around the edges.

Ready. They are good eaten warm but cold as well.

They make very crumbly cookies but that's good. 
I ate one with a hot chocolate while watching a movie. Very good combination. 

Smakelijk!