Hi, foodies in the Hive!
Today I am pleased to participate in this challenge from the Foodies Bee Hive Community: Challenge Foodies: Cookin for your sweetheart.You still have a chance to participate; just click on the link to find out what it's all about. I want to invite 
How good it is to have a day like today to celebrate love; although if you agree with me, we should celebrate love whenever we feel like it and the more often the better! Today I prepared peanut and cocoa cookies to celebrate it. My Valentine loves to have cookies for breakfast; since we're trying to cut down on wheat flour at home, I don't bake cookies as often as I used to and when I do make them, I try to use very little flour. Below, I'll share with you the recipe for these peanut and cocoa cookies that were worth a big smile on my Valentine's face this morning :)
My husband loves roasted peanuts and cocoa, so I decided to combine these two ingredients to make cookies for him to complement his favorite breakfast, which includes a cup of latte and a good-sized potato and onion omelet.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 handful of roasted peanuts (unsalted)
- 100 gr of wheat flour
- 50 gr cocoa powder (unsweetened)
- 50 gr peanut butter
- 80 grams of sugar
4 tablespoons of water + 1 tablespoon of olive oil + 1 tablespoon of butter infused in a bain marie - 1/2 teaspoon of soda
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1 tablespoon vanilla essence
HOW I MADE THESE COOKIES
I keep peanuts in the freezer, raw and shelled. To roast it, I let it bake at 250 °F x 15 minutes. I don't remove the thin skin; it also goes into the cookie dough. Today I decided to remove it only from the peanuts that I will use to decorate, so that their light color contrasts with the dark color of the cookie.
I dry mix the sifted flour, salt, soda, and cocoa.
In a separate bowl, I mixed the sugar, peanut butter and vanilla. Peanut butter is pasty and sticky; you need a good paddle to integrate the ingredients.
Once I had the dry mixture and the wet mixture, I put them together, and I kneaded them.
The result is similar to a crumble.
Then you have to add more liquid. It is better to do it this way, instead of adding the liquid at the beginning, as this will help to have more crispiness.
In a bain marie, I quickly infused 4 tablespoons of water, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and 1 tablespoon of butter. Then I added it to the mixture along with some peanuts to form a dough.
The dough is quiet friendly.
I used some heart-shaped cookie cutters; although I don't really like their shape, I prefer them on this occasion because I don't need to press very hard to cut the peanuts that are left on the edges.
...So I corrected the shape a bit with my hands, and I encrusted as many peanuts as I could in each cookie.
I took them to the oven and let them cook for 20 minutes at 300 °F.
The cookies grew too big on the small tray in my oven, but I was able to save them!
We accompanied our Valentine's Day breakfast with these peanut and cocoa cookies that I made with lots of love.
