Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

So after a conversation with my friend Kris out in Seattle, where he had just received the 6 dozen cookies that I had sent him, he told me not to send anymore cookies.  Well, I took that to mean he never wanted cookies from me again.  Well, fine, I'll just send them to people who appreciate them.  Well fast forward three months and several thousand text messages and phone calls, we're on the phone one night and in a sad voice, he asks when he's going to get cookies again.  I laughed and told him that I thought no cookies meant no cookies ever again.  His very strangled gasp reinforced the idea that maybe I had taken his words to the extreme.  Needless to say, a couple days later I had a free day and decided to make him some cookies.  At first he told me that he didn't have any cookies preferences, but after threatening to send him Pina Colada cookies, his preference become peanut butter cookies.  (The Pina Colada cookies might need to be something I experiment with sometime, hmmm!)  So needless to say, I decided to make two types of cookies.  This is the first cookie.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flours
• 1/4 cup dark baking cocoa 
• 1/4 cup milk chocolate cocoa (you can also use 1/2 cup regular cocoa)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup crunchy peanut butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 cups peanut butter morsels 

Directions 

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, beat together the sugars, butter, and peanut butter until light and fluffy.  Beat in the vanilla, egg, and water, then stir in the dry ingredients, blending well. Stir in the peanut butter morsels. Scoop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets; a tablespoon cookie scoop works well here. Use a small ice cream scoop.  Bake the cookies for 7 to 9 minutes, or until they're set and you can smell chocolate. Remove them from the oven, and cool on a rack.

Yield: about 3 dozen cookies.

Original recipe from King Arthur Flour