Chocolate-Peanut Butter Chip Pretzel Cookies: 28 Days of Super Bowl Recipes:

You know we’re hitting the Super-Bowl-news-week-before-the-week-before-the-Big-Game-doldrums when the biggest story of the day is the release of Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl line up. Ufford over on Warming Glow has a solid breakdown of the starting pups, even if his analysis of Cocker Spaniels is completely off the mark.

/Purposely only sends Ufford pictures of the Spaniel without her Steelers collar on.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Chip Pretzel Cookies

Just because it’s the Super Bowl doesn’t mean it should be all chips, wings and pizza. You’re going to need something sweet to counterbalance the savory.

Fortunately the salt from the pretzels prevents these cookies from being overly sugary tasting and they keep their crunch nicely in during baking, matching well with the softness of the dough.

You will need…

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, soften to room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups pretzels sticks, broken into pieces
1 cup chocolate chips of your preference
3/4 cup peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 350º.

Pretty much a riff on the classic Toll House recipe everyone in the world makes with just a little more vanilla.

You can increase the amount of chocolate chips and peanut butter chips to your own personal preference, but I would say no more than 1 1/2 cup of chocolate chips and 1 cup peanut butter chips. You need to leave room in the dough to hold everything all together. Me, I like my cookies not to be overstuffed (despite having three types of stuffings in this particular cookie).

In a small bowl, sift the flour, salt and baking soda together and set aside.

Cream together the softened butter and sugars either by hand or with a mixer.

Mix in the eggs and the vanilla.

Once the eggs have been fully incorporated, slowly stir in the flour mixture until the dough is completely formed.

PRETZELS AND CHOCOLATE CHIPS AND PEANUT BUTTER CHIPS, OH MY!

A word of advice, don’t mix in all the pretzels and chips into the dough with an electric mixer. Doing so will only crush all your pretzels down and you’ll lose all the magic of the crunch in your soft cookie. But if you’re worried about too much crunch and stabby pretzel pieces, add just half of your pretzel bits and chips into the dough, mix on the lowest speed and then fold in the rest of the sweet and salty ingredients in by hand.

Or just fold them in by hand. Up to you.

On a lined cookie sheet, form the dough into balls and evenly space. (As you can see from the picture, I’m a big fan of the medium sized cookie scoop. Fairly certain it’s the best $6.99 I spent in the year 2000.)

Bake until the edges are golden and the middle of the cookie has risen. About 10-15 minutes depending on how hot your oven runs.

And serve on the Super Bowl buffet for guests to pick at throughout the game.

Soft and chewy? Yes. Salty and sweet? Absolutely. Still tastes good with a dark porter or ale? From my experience, yes. Which is why it works as football food.