Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut Butter cookies are one of my all time favorites! Well, pretty much anything with peanut butter is just plain yummy! So let me tell you how these peanut butter cookies came to be. I have been following another baking blogger, Buttercakes by Evan, from Mobile, AL since August. I first discovered Evan's blog when I was at a local running clubs 1 year anniversary 5K run and she had made the cake for this celebration...check it out here. She had some of her business cards sitting by the cake, so I grabbed one and immediately went home and looked up her blog and have been following her ever since. Evan is a self taught cake decorator and has been decorating cakes for about a year and a half...she is amazing! So last week I finally decided it was time to send Evan an email, letting her know that she has inspired me to create my baking blog and tell her how much I enjoy seeing all of her cake creations. She replied right away and ansewred all the questions I had for her about how she got started in cakes. She even asked me if I wanted to make something for a bake sale she was hosting this weekend for the Environmental Studies Center. This was an excuse to bake so I said I would definitely help her out. So after a week of corresponding back and forth via email, I finally got to meet Evan on Friday afternoon when I dropped off these cookies!


I had some Reese's Pieces left over from Halloween so I decided to make half of the batch with additional peanut butter in the cookies by adding these colorful candies...delicious!

Peanut Butter Cookies (recipe from Lovin' from the Oven, blogger)

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 1/2 tsps vanilla
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 med eggs

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Beat butter, peanut butter and vanilla.
• Mix in both sugars, salt and baking powder.
• Gradually mix in flour, half a a time.
• Beat in eggs one at a time.
• Roll into 1 1/2 inch balls and roll in sugar.
  
• Using a fork, flatten cookie and make criss cross pattern
• Bake for 12-13 minutes.
  

As you all know when it comes to bake sale items, everything needs to be individually packaged so it is easy to sell. I wanted to come up with a cute way to display my cookies. I used a scalloped paper punch and cut out some tags that I decorated with dots around the edges and then labeled as "Peanut Butter" or "Peanut Butter Reese's Pieces". Then I punched a hole in the top of each tag. I placed 2 cookies per bag and then added a colored ribbon through the tags to tie off the top of the bags to close them.


Look how cute these little cookie bags turned out and they were so simple! So next time you have a bake sale, get creative and add some fun labels to your bake sale goodies. I bet you can find all the materials you will need around your house.

Materials Needed for Bake Sale Tags:

• 1 1/2" scallop punch
• paper
• colored markers
• hole punch
• ribbon
  

I just got an email update from Evan and her bake sale raised over $250 for the Environmental Center...I am so glad I was able to help with this event!