Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips

And on my days off, I get on Pinterest and bake... It's kind of great how many things you can get done when Monday is your day off. Everyone else is working, so the day is yours. I slept in. Watched "Once Upon a Time" while I had my coffee and breakfast. I vacuumed and mopped. Did P90X-2. Showered. Made lunch. Ran errands (got my watch fixed, got part of my Halloween costume, went to Sprouts). Baked. Got some paperwork done. Pinned a million things. And I'm going to make kickboxing. Exciting stuff. 

So...Peanut butter. Pumpkin. Dark Chocolate. Score. The original recipe is from Crazy For Crust via Pinterest. I really hadn't intended to change anything...but it turned out that I only had 1 cup of AP flour on hand. Thus, I ended up doing 1 cup AP flour and 1 cup WW flour. Not bad. Generally, you can go half-and-half and not change things too much. Using all WW flour will change the texture. Of course, you can use whatever kind of chocolate chips you like...but I'm a dark chocolate kind of girl.

Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips

Ingredients: 

1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt

3/4 cup pumpkin puree 

2 eggs

1/2 cup natural peanut butter

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 1/2 TBSP pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup AP flour

1 cup WW flour

1 cup chocolate chips, divided

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350*F and prepare a loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray.
• In a large bowl (or your KitchenAid), mix together the yogurt, pumpkin, eggs, and peanut butter until smooth. Add sugars, pumpkin pie spice, and soda and mix. Mix in the flours. Stir in 3/4 cup of the chocolate chips. 
• Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. It's thick so you'll need to even it out. Sprinkle the remaining chocolate chips on top.
• Bake for about 30-35 minutes, depending on if you want it a little gooey in the center or baked through. 
• Let it cool in the pan for a few minutes before transferring to your cutting board.

Enjoy!

Laura Bush's Cowboy Cookies

I finished up my leadership clinical rotation yesterday. To celebrate, I made some delicious cookies and took them up to the unit for everyone. I had found this recipe on Pinterest a while back, and was eager to try it out. I'm so glad I did! These cookies are fantastic. Big. Chewy. Goodness. I got about 78 out of the recipe. You could probably get a few more, but I have this problem with just eating the cookie dough... I left some for the family, but the ones I took to the hospital were gone by 1400. Apparently everyone thought they were pretty tasty. This is a really easy recipe, that could easily be made in to thirds. I actually ended up having to divide the batter in half before adding the coconut, pecans, and chocolate chips because there was too much for the KitchenAid stand mixer to handle. This recipe was featured on Good Morning America, although I snagged the recipe from Christmas-Cookies.com. Enjoy!


Laura Bush's Cowboy Cookies

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 TBSP baking powder
1 TBSP baking soda
1 TBSP ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups butter (at room temperature) 
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 TBSP vanilla
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2 cups sweetened flake coconut
2 cups chopped pecans

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together; set aside. Beat butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy. Gradually beat in sugars. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each. Beat in vanilla. Stir in flour mixture until combined. Add oats, coconut, chocolate chips, and pecans. For larger cookies, drop 1/4 cup dough on ungreased baking sheets, spacing 3" apart. Bake for 17-19 minutes, until edges are lightly browned; rotate sheets halfway through. For smaller cookies (what I did), use 2 TBSP dough for each; bake for 15ish minutes. Move to a cooling rack. 

These are also good warm with a little bit of peanut butter!