The Adventures of a Frustrated Baker

It's almost time for my favorite time of the school year!  Girl Scout cookie season!!  It comes at the perfect time, far enough away from January that you don't feel too guilty for giving into those adorable little faces in their sharp little uniforms that will greet you at the exit of every major store in your community starting on the 28th.  In effort to help kick off the season, Girl Scouts of Western Washington is again hosting an annual recipe contest, and I have been selected as a finalist!  Be sure to head to their website and vote for me!  Tell your friends! While of course Girl Scout cookies are delicious in their own right, they also can be turned into gloriously decadent treats.  I always have a leftover box or two of most of the flavors in my freezer year round but I especially love to keep some Trefoils on hand because they make the most delicious cookie crumb crusts for any dessert.  A personal favorite of mine is raspberry streus...

So, hopefully by now you have all checked out my last blog entry with the best peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies I'd ever had.  Notice the past tense there...they were the best ones I had ever had until I made one little addition!  Any guesses?!  Bacon! (It was my hubby's idea, he claims bacon is the "duct tape of food", it makes everything better...) The basic recipe is the same, the only difference is that I mixed in eight pieces of chopped bacon, cooked until crispy.  Honestly, it sounds weird.  Trust me, I know...I've had pretty much every single one of my coworkers look at me like I was crazy since I first baked these cookies...that is until the tasted them.  I don't think I know a single person that was not converted after trying these little gems!  The crispy bacon adds a more interesting texture and a little bit of salty crunch.  I don't think I will ever go back, chocolate + peanut butter = amazing...chocolate + peanut butte...

I don't know about you all, but I have two things that I do when I am down.  One is clean, which I usually reserve for super serious cases, and two is bake.  After receiving yet more bad news in my quest for my dream job, I felt the urge to create something delicious.  Yummy food always cheers me up, especially if it combines the two best ingredients ever, peanut butter and chocolate!  These cookies are seriously one of my comfort foods.  I think of peanut butter and chocolate as God's gift to the food world...all sweet and salty and creamy and deliciousness!  Nothing makes me feel better than these two together.  Plus I had this delicious new roasted honey nut peanut butter I've been dying to try in a batch of cookies!  So why is this blog post called a "battle" you ask?  Mainly that while I find these cookies perfection in themselves...my hubby thinks that there is one way they could be improved...but we will get to that in part 2! The...