Baking with Brooke

My office was closed the week between Christmas and New Year's so Brooke and I decided to get together to tackle one of my biggest fears - baking bread. She thought Hawaiian rolls would be a good place to start. After a few minor mishaps involving an errant mixer and needing to run to the store for more yeast this is what we produced:


Delicious, sweet, pineapple-y rolls. SP loved these, especially with a pat of butter. We cheated and used her breadmaker, which gave us this huge ball of dough after an hour and a half:


We separated the dough into two pieces so we each got 9 rolls. We rolled the dough into balls and placed them in baking pans:


After the dough went into the pans it needed to rise another hour so we took the opportunity to make cookies. Since SP loves peanut butter cookies and we all love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate we decided to make these peanut butter cookies.


The cookies are a pretty basic recipe. We added copious amounts of chocolate and peanut butter chips:


... before rolling them in sugar and pressing them down with the tines of a fork. Here they are ready to be baked:


SP said these were the best peanut butter cookies he has ever had, and that says a lot because he loves peanut butter cookies. I have to say, they are truly amazing. We've been rationing them out because we could have eaten them all in one sitting if left to our own devices. Delicious!

Thanks for a fun day, Brooke! We have to do it again sometime. :)