I baked peanut butter cookies for the first time in a long time and decided that I just didn't feel like making those totally played-out criss-cross marks with the tines of a fork. It wasn't laziness - criss-crosses are just so...2005. This is 2006, and we are so far beyond whatever those criss crosses were orginally there for.

Well, after baking them, I realized that the criss crosses are absolutely necessary. Not only did the cookies look boring, like plain sugar cookies that had stuck it out in the tanning salon a little too long, but you couldn't tell that they were peanut butter cookies! Obviously, it was too late to make the cris crosses after they were done baking, so I added them as chocolate. Not quite the same, but pretty tasty.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Bake cookies:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together ½ cup of peanut butter and ½ cup softened butter (that's 1 stick). Add ½ cup granulated sugar and ½ cup of packed brown sugar. Beat in 1 large egg and 1 tsp vanilla.

In a separate bowl, sift together 1¼ cup all purpose flour, ½ tsp baking powder, ½ tsp baking soda, and ¼ tsp salt.

Stir dry ingredients into butter/sugar mixture. The cookie dough will be soft and a little sticky.

Roll cookie dough into 1 to 1½" balls and place 2" apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Between ball rollings, put the dough into the fridge to let it harden a little - makes it easer to roll on the next batch.

Bake for 7 to 9 minutes, until cookies are light browned. Cool completely before drizzling.

Make chocolate criss-cross drizzles:

This is the easiest way I know how to make chocolate drizzles. Place 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips in a plastic zipper bag and seal about ¾ closed. Microwave in 10 second intervals, massaging the chips between, until the chips are melted. Doing it in a plastic zipper bag means you can toss it in the trash afterwards.

Snip a tiny corner of the bag with scissors. Really, it should be tiny, because it's easier to make the opening bigger if it's too small, but if it's too big, you can't ever go back, and you'll end up with the Mississippi River instead of little chocolate drizzles. 

Do I even have to explain this? Drizzle back and forth one way, then across the other way.