Pumpkin Cranberry Cookies

It took a little while, but it's finally fall. Big time, fall. With the holidays seemingly coming in during beach season, and the weather staying a perfect-for-outdoor-drinks 70 degrees for, like, 3 weeks after we finally got back to 5-day work weeks (what is up with a 3-day yuntif, anyway??), it seemed like fall would never hit. And now it has.....which I'm actually excited about! I am thrilled to finally get to break out my scarves and sweaters and boots! Ah, so many boots :-)

Anyway, if you've seen, pretty much, any post on this blog, you know that I love pumpkin. I love that it's not too sweet, I love that it pairs with spicy flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg, and I love that anytime I make a pumpkin pie, I immediately think of my family and celebrating my father's birthday with his favorite dessert.

When I hosted Shabbos dinner last week for friends, I made a chocolate dessert - an intensely chocolate dessert. It was a "brownie pudding," which is another way of saying "a totally underdone chocolate lava cake that you serve warm and oozey with whipped cream on top." Totally easy and totally decadent, but totally not my speed. I'm just not a chocolate person. Pair it with peanut butter, and I'm good to go. But on its own? Meh. I need something else to counterbalance the overly rich chocolate fudginess. Pumpkin is my go-to flavor for fall, and since I had just been to Costco two nights earlier and bought the largest bag of Craisins ever (hey, the huge bag at Costco costs less than the regular bag at the supermarket! Totally worth it), I decided on pumpkin cookies with cranberries.

Now, baking needs to be precise (cooking is an art, baking is a science) - more precise than I generally am. So I decided to follow a recipe.....well, sort of. I found a recipe that just seemed...meh. So-so. So I doctored it up, made a few substitutions here and there, thought I screwed up the entire thing, and then ended up loving the results. The cookies have this very deep spicy flavor, with lots of pumpkin in there, and they are ridiculously soft. I've had leftovers slowly depleting in my apartment for a week now and they're still little pillows of goodness all these days later. I would normally not post someone else's recipe, but since I took so many liberties, they're mine now :-)

Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies
makes approximately 30 cookies

1/2 cup margarine (1 stick), softened 

2/3 cup white sugar  

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder 

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. ginger

1 cup dried cranberries

3/4 cup white chocolate chips 

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large mixing bowl, cream margarine and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla, egg and pumpkin. 

3. Add 1 cup of flour and mix until incorporated. Add remaining flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger and mix until fully incorporated. Cut the cranberries in half and stir into mixture along with the white chocolate chips. The dough will be sticky, but if you allow it to rest for about 5 minutes, it eases up. 

4. Drop rounded tablespoons on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, flattening the cookies halfway through the baking and rotating the cookie sheet. They should  be very soft when they come out of the oven. Flatten them lightly one more time as soon as they come out of the oven.

*Editor's note: These cookies don't spread very much and they're a little too puffy for my liking, which is why I flatten them twice. If you want a very puffy cookie, don't bother - they're still delicious, and they will "fall" a bit overnight after you've baked them.

 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Amazingness

Alright, friends. What I present to you today is not exactly groundbreaking or revolutionary. Everyone knows that peanut butter = good, peanut butter + chocolate = awesome, and peanut butter + chocolate + pretzels = amazing. You all also know that peanut butter pie is on the short list of necessary baked goods in my family at any holiday or event where I am involved. This 5-ingredient pie is so easy and such a crowd-pleaser, that it's almost silly NOT to make it.

So when a peanut butter-loving friend invited me to Shabbos lunch and asked me to bring dessert, out of sheer willingness to please (read: laziness and wanting to make the easiest thing I could think of), my mind went to my good old standby. But then I was told that there would be 12 people at lunch, which is just too many for my humble-looking little pie to accommodate. That, and I have a compulsory need to impress people and, as delicious as it is, my PB pie doesn't look impressive. So I decided to amp it up. Big time. A homemade salty pretzel crust, a sheet of gooey chocolate fudge, fluffy peanut butter filling, refreshing whipped cream, more salty pretzels to accent it, abstract chocolate and peanut butter decorations on top....yeah, goodbye unassuming little pie, sayonara to my 5-minute wunderkind. This effort was well worth it.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Amazingness

(serves a lot. Like, a lot.)


Crust:
4 cups of thin pretzels, crushed (just about a full 16 oz. bag), divided
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup margarine, melted

Chocolate Fudge Layer:
2 cups chocolate chips
3/4 cup pareve milk
1 tbsp. honey
1 tsp. vanilla

Peanut Butter Mousse Layer:
1 cup peanut butter
8 oz. pareve cream cheese
2 cups powdered sugar
2 cups pareve whipping cream, whipped

Garnish:
1 cup pareve whipping cream, whipped
1/3 cup peanut butter

To make crust:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix the melted margarine, brown sugar, and 3 cups of crushed pretzels (reserve the last cup for garnish) until the margarine and sugar are evenly coating the pretzels. Pat the mixture into a 9"x13" pan and bake until slightly golden, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool, about 5 minutes. (It will be soft, but it will firm up as it cools more.)

To make fudge:
In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips and pareve milk in 30-second intervals, until melted, stirring between "nukes." (It took me three 30-second intervals.) Whisk until smooth, and add honey and vanilla, whisking to incorporate. Allow to cool for about 5 minutes, and then pour over the slightly cooled pretzel crust, reserving 1/2 cup of the fudge for garnish. Place the chocolate covered crust in the refrigerator for at least one hour and allow to set.*

To make peanut butter mousse layer:
In a large bowl, mix the peanut butter and cream cheese with a hand mixer. Slowly add the powdered sugar. Add the whipped cream and beat for one minute, until fully incorporated. Pour the mousse over the chocolate-peanut butter crust and refrigerate.

To garnish:
Evenly spread the remaining whipped cream over the peanut butter mousse. Sprinkle the remaining cup of crushed pretzels over the whole dessert. Microwave the remaining 1/2 cup of chocolate fudge in a closed ziploc bag for 15 seconds (until slightly warm and runny); snip a tiny bit off the corner of the bag, and abstractly zig-zag over the pretzels to decorate. Microwave the remaining 1/3 cup of peanut butter in a closed ziploc bag for 10 seconds, and do the same. Refrigerate up to 24 hours.

*Note: This dessert has a lot of steps, admittedly. But it can be broken up into stages: the crust can be made and covered in the chocolate fudge and allowed to sit in the fridge for up to a day. (In fact, this might work out great, since you want the fudge to be pretty well set before you cover it in the peanut butter mousse.) The mousse can be added to the crust a day before serving, as well, since you want all the layers to be firm so when you cut/scoop into it, it doesn't fall into a big blob. Not that that would make it taste bad. Literally, nothing will make this taste bad. It's chocolate, peanut butter, and pretzels, for G-d's sake!