Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Cookies (Vegan)
I’ve been wanting to give stuffed cookies a go for ages but I just been so intimidated by that molten gooey centre – it seems so unobtainable! It turns out, though, that peanut butter hides a multitude of sins AND makes for a pretty banging cookie stuffing.
The peanut butter I used here is a thick, supermarket own-brand. You know, the cheap, creamy one? You could try using a more runny one if that’s all you’ve got, but you might want to add a bit more icing sugar to firm it up a little. We don’t want puddles of peanut butter all over the place…or maybe we do, it’s your call. You could also try this with other types of nut butter or spreads – I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Nutella or Vego spread would be dynamite.
I also didn’t have any chocolate chips to hand so used a bar of dark chocolate chopped up nice and small. You could also sub the chocolate chips for salted peanuts or dried fruit, or leave ’em out completely: this is really a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ kinda cookie.
Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Cookies (Vegan)
Ingredients (makes 9 large cookies):
- 125g creamy peanut butter
- 50g icing sugar
- 1 tsp maple syrup
- 110g vegan butter
- 125g soft light brown sugar
- 50g golden caster sugar
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 3 tbsp soya milk
- 150g plain flour
- 25g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp bicarbonate soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 150g dark chocolate chips
Method:
- Mix together the peanut butter, icing sugar and maple syrup until they form a dough. Split the dough into 9 equal pieces and flatten into fat disks – they should be about 2.5cm in diameter and 1.5cm in height. Leave to chill in the freezer while you prepare the cookie dough.
- For the cookie dough, cream together the butter and sugars using an electric hand mixer. Add in the vegetable oil and soya milk and whisk until fully combined.
- Add in the flour, cocoa powder, cornstarch, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt and mix until fully incorporated.
- Stir through the chocolate chips and then chill the dough in the fridge for 30 mins.
- Preheat the oven to 190C, remove the dough from the fridge and the peanut disks from the freezer.
- Use your hands to mold the dough around each peanut disk so it is fully enclosed. I did this by flattening some cookie dough in my hand, placing a peanut disk on top, covering with more cookie dough and pinching the sides together to encase the peanut butter.
- Place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake for 13 mins. Allow to cool before removing from the baking tray — they will feel soft when first brought out of the oven but firm up as they cool.
