You KNOW You Want Some
What do you do when you're working full-time
and taking 3 summer classes? Make cookies!
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground mace
1/2 cup unsulfured molasses
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup diced apple (I used dried)
Dried douglah pod halves, rehydrated and chopped (see below)
1/2 cup cooked crisp bacon
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup small-batch bourbon
2 cups roasted skinless peanuts (if desired)
Put douglah pods into a small glass or mug, pour in enough bourbon to cover them, and let them rehydrate until soft or overnight. Use 1/4 cup of the bourbon from rehydrating the pods as the bourbon ingredient above. Finely chop rehydrated pods to add to the dough as indicated below. (I used 2 pod halves, or 1 whole pod. This made them hot, but not so hot you wouldn't want to down an entire batch in one sitting.)
1) Combine flour, allspice, mace, and salt in a bowl - stir or whisk to thoroughly blend.
Cook butter, peanut butter and molasses in a saucepan over low heat, stirring, until butter is melted and mixture is smooth. Turn off heat. Stir in brown sugar, then stir in apple, bacon, and douglah. Remove from the burner and let cool slightly. Stir in bourbon. Stir this mixture into the flour mixture, and combine thoroughly. Chill dough for at least one hour.
2) Preheat oven to 400F (204C.) Shape dough into balls (about 1 tablespoon each.) Roll balls in peanuts (if desired), then flatten just a bit. Place on parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake, rotating sheets half way through, until flattened and browned on edges, 8 to 11 minutes. Let cookies cool on sheets 3 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to one week.
Note: If you want to speed up the process, skip rehydrating dried pods. Put douglah powder in with the flour, salt, and other spices, and just use the bourbon out of the bottle. I like the flavor the bourbon adds to the douglah pods and the heat the pods add to the bourbon, but simplifying works, too.
I started with the Douglah Nut Bourbon Chews recipe I posted in the Cooking With Fire thread a while back, and made some modifications. That dough was difficult to work with, and the cookies spread a whole heck of a lot during baking. Having worked with the original recipe, I didn't want to use fresh apple and so add more liquid this time - I was concerned they would spread too much. This dough was much stiffer, however, and the dough hardly spread at all during baking, so it turned out fresh apple probably could have been used. These are intended to be soft, chewy cookies, but you could bake them a bit longer if you want something less chewy. When I took the pics they were still fairly hot from the oven.
I made a few in the toaster oven last night, to see how they would work out, then made a few more this morning for the pics. Hot cookies with breakfast, fresh out of the oven, some GOOD stuff!
