Peer pressure.

Lately I have been doing great pretty good with my healthy eating kick. I stopped buying junk food while out grocery shopping. Traded in Doritos for raw almonds and chocolate for grapes and apples. By not having this stuff in the house I have been forced into either eating healthy, or not eating at all (which we all know is impossible). What I didn't think of at the time was that, although I wasn't purchasing junk food, I still had everything I needed to make my own!

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but I spend a lot of time chatting with a group of ladies that I met through TheKnot.com while planning my wedding. We were all June 2011 brides and formed pretty strong bonds during the process. Although many think we are nuts for keeping in touch like we do, Juneville (as we have dubbed it) has been a great support for me and full of inspiration! Hell, the girls on there probably know more about my life than most of my real life friends! Anywho, today our little township was full of junk food talk. What are your favorite junk foods? Who wants me to send them amazing cookies? Which is better, Pepsi or Coke? FYI: The answer is Pepsi. So, I caved into the peer pressure, dug through my over-packed baking cabinet and got out all my supplies. COOKIE TIME!

So, without further ado, I give you the recipe for (what I think) are some of the most amazing cookies ever made. Ever.

Double Chocolate, Double Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks of unsalted butter: About 1 cup, a little colder than room temp works best.
• 1¼ cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• ¼ cup peanut butter: I chose chunky because that's what I had plus, I like the added texture.
• ½ cup dark cocoa powder: I used Ghirardelli, unsweetened.
• 2¼ cups all-purpose flour
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 6 ounces of peanut butter chips: I'm a snob and use the Reese's ones. About half a bag.
• 8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips: About ¾ of a bag.

How to:

First off, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease your cookie sheet(s).  Begin by cubing your butter and mixing it with the sugar until fluffy-ish (about a minute or two). Then, one at a time, add your eggs and once they are well blended add in the peanut butter. At this point the mixture will be kind of runny. Next, slowly add in the cocoa powder, followed by the flour, salt and baking powder. Mix at a medium speed for roughly 3 minutes to ensure that all the lumps and such are polished out. Lastly, add your chocolate and peanut butter chips. I definitely recommend mixing these in by hand because, while your mixer will do it, it also kind of destroys the chips as they are smashed up against the side of the bowl.

After you are all blended up, drop the batter by "heaping teaspoons" onto the cookie sheet. Generally my heaping teaspoon was a ½ inch-ish ball. Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. When you remove the sheet from the oven, let it sit and cool for 2-3 minutes to let the cookies harden a bit. Otherwise when you try to move them to cooling rack they will just fall apart. Once they are cooled a bit, use a spatula to move the cookies to a cooling rack (Or in my case wax paper since I don't own a cooling rack. How does that happen?!) and you are done!

The recipe makes about 3 dozen very yummy cookies! Which is WAY too many so I recommend having friends come around quite regularly for the next few days because otherwise... That's a LOT of calories.

And, because I haven't mentioned it yet, cookies are NOT part of my zombie apocalypse survival plan. First off, the high calorie count will eventually cause you to gain weight which will inevitably make you run slower. This is a Z.A. no-no. While, in some scenarios, zombies are slow and clumsy (see the old school "Dawn of the Dead" or "Night of the Living Dead") in others they are quick and relatively smart (as in "The Walking Dead" and "28 Days Later"). In event of the latter situation, you definitely need to be quick on your feet and able to run for long distances to avoid having your brain eaten. Second, sugar is good to burn for a quick fuel source, but it doesn't last long. To keep up your energy you are going to need more protein and carbohydrates than a cookie can offer. Thus, I recommend beef jerky and peanut butter.

So, kids, invest in your dehydrators now!