Frozen PB Cookie Balls…Great for Busy Moms

These little jewels were born of frustration.  The Middle child, aka HC2, short for hoodlum child #2, doesn’t eat.  All day.  What, a member of the Newton Thorpe household that doesn’t eat?  Say it ain’t so.  Ahhh, tis true.  She will go to school, not eat breakfast, break or lunch.  So when she gets home, I’m trying to find something she will eat. 

Now, don’t be calling DFCS and telling them I don’t feed my children.  We have plenty of food in the house.  Lack of appetite is a side effect of her school meds.  It is a battle we have been fighting for six years with her.

HC2 and HC3 love anything homemade and baked.  While researching future posts about freezer cooking (RAD style) I came across freezing balls of cookie dough.  Duh…that would be great since I only need to cook 10-12 per batch, once or twice a week.

After fetching the hoodies (yes, I call them that to their faces, albeit with love and affection), I went to work mixing up a batch of peanut butter cookies.  I rolled the dough into balls and baked about 20 for our test run.  They were a successful hit:  HC2 ate the majority of them.  Whew.

The rest of the dough was rolled into 1 inch balls and placed on wax paper on a metal pan and put in the freezer.  Once slightly frozen, I placed in a freezer bag.  I now have about 52 future cookies hanging out in the freezer.  I can place them on a cookie sheet to thaw, go get the Hoodies from school, and pop in the oven when we get home.  This is a quick easy snack and I controlled the ingredients.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups crunchy peanut butter
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) softened unsalted butter
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, (spooned and leveled)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cream Peanut butter, sugar and butter, when mixed add the egg and dry ingredients.  Mix well.  Roll into 1 inch balls, flatten with a fork to get that bakery looking criss-cross pattern and bake on cookie sheet.  I use parchment paper, just because I like the finished cookie.  Bake for 12-14 minutes, but check them…a thinner cookie will bake quicker.