Peanut Butter Valentines

The inspiration for these cookies was from Martha Stewart, but like just about everything, I changed it a little. For Valentine's Day, they had made her Peanut Butter and Jam Thumbprint cookies, but used their thumbs to make a heart instead of a regular impression. I thought it was such a cute idea, and the cookie looked so pretty, but my kids don't like peanut butter and jam.

Then the little light bulb inside my head flashed on. My kids may not like peanut butter and jam, but they do like peanut butter and chocolate!

So we went ahead and made our own version of a Valentine's themed peanut butter cookie. Since I have a recipe I like, I didn't use the one from Martha, and just went with what I know.

Cream together:
1 cup margarine (or butter)
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup white sugar
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs

Add 2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Mix well.

Roll dough into 1 1/2 " balls and place on lightly greased cookie sheet.

Here comes the Valentine's Day adaptation....

Use your thumb to press a heart shape into the top of each cookie.

Bake at 325 for 10 minutes. When they come out of the oven, I needed to touch up my heart shapes a bit.

While they cooled, I melted some chocolate chips (sorry, no amount to guide you. It was probably about a cup and a half, but I can't say for sure).

I put my melted chocolate into an icing bag with a small circular tip on the end, and then piped a heart into the depressions on top of the cooled cookies.

Repeat, repeat, repeat!

Have a taste. (Repeat, repeat, repeat!)

After we had sampled our treats, we packed them up in little Valentine's boxes, with or without tissue (I couldn't get the tissue to work in the boxes that were actually shaped like hearts, but it worked very prettily in the rectangular ones).

Then we each chose a family that we would like to share the love with for Valentine's day and went to their homes to deliver them.