Jumbo Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Repost from one year ago!!  Soo strange that I was thinking of making these today and when I checked the blog, to repost the recipe, it was 1 year ago that I made and posted this exact recipe!  Must be something about 365 days and needing a Giant Peanut Butter Cup Cookie!  Funny thing is that I also am recollecting in my post below about a cookie job I had about 6 years ago...come full circle and you may be interested to know that I am working 1 day a week at that same cookie company for the Holidays!  Everything old is new again?

I LOVE cookies. Love them. Crispy, chewy, chunky, warm, cold...love them!


I worked for a cookie company for about 2 years after we first moved to Maine. Yes, I'm still carrying around a few extra lbs. from that job. We made plain Sugar Cookies sprinkled with coarse sanding sugar that just melted in your mouth. Ginger Krinkles with a yummy amount of ginger, Chocolate Chip cookies with coconut that made them soo tropical-ish and chewy.
I don't make cookies often, because I will devour them. I have no control. And I don't eat them often, because when I do, they have got to be the best. I mean it. No packaged cookies, no store bought cookies even from the bakery section, they have got to be really good. This time of year, it's all cookies all over the place, and I will be making a few batches of my favorites. First up, Jumbo Peanut Butter Cup Cookies. And being a thrifty Yankee, I bought Peanut Butter cups on sale after Halloween and saved them in my freezer until now. Bake up a batch on a cold wintry day and enjoy.

Credit for the recipe belongs here, at Tasty Kitchen:


http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/desserts/jumbo-peanut-butter-cup-cookies/
Jumbo Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
 Ingredients:
½ cups Butter, Softened

¾ cups Smooth Peanut Butter

¾ cups Granulated Sugar

¾ cups Packed Brown Sugar

1-½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract

2 whole Eggs

⅛ teaspoons Salt

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

2 cups All-purpose Flour

½ cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

10 whole Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Unwrapped And Chopped
Preparation Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 or 375 degrees (see note below).
In a large bowl, cream together butter, peanut butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar. Stir in vanilla extract and eggs. Incorporate salt, baking soda and flour together into the dough until all ingredients are moist. Stir in chocolate chips and chopped peanut butter cups.
Roll cookies out between the palms of your hands to be the size of golf balls. Place 6 cookie dough balls on a lightly greased baking sheet and using a fork, press down to make a cross hatch pattern.
Note: For chewier and softer cookies, bake at 350 degrees for 11-12 minutes. For crunchier cookies with slightly soft centers, bake at 375 degrees for 12 minutes.

NYA Annual Holiday Craft Fair ~ This Weekend!!

Find me at the hottest craft fair around this weekend at...

NYA Annual Holiday Craft Fair

This Saturday!!   December 3rd

9:00-3:00

Come and do your Holiday shopping.  Find me in the Cafeteria section of the school.  I sell soo much soap at this craft fair...come early for the best selection.  As an added bonus, there are about 4 or 5 other craft fairs happening with in walking distance of my craft fair.  Often people park and walk to the different Church fairs and craft shows.

The North Yarmouth Academy (NYA) Parents’ Association will host the Annual Holiday Craft Fair on Saturday, December 3, 2011 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in North Yarmouth Academy’s gymnasium (154 Main Street) and Safford Center cafeteria (148 Main Street) inYarmouth.

This annual event is held in conjunction with a town-wide holiday celebration. Over sixty vendors from across the state will present a diverse variety of crafts including artwork, photography, jewelry, candles, soap, alpaca products, blown glass, woodworking and much more. Enjoy a sit-down lunch at the NYA Café and listen to holiday music by the NYA Chorus. Money raised from booth rental fees will help support NYA teacher grant requests.

NorthYarmouthAcademyis an independent, college preparatory, coeducational day school serving students in grades five through twelve. For 198 years, NYA has fostered integrity, character and intellect in young adults. For more information, please contact NYA at 207-847-5423 or visit our website at http://www.nya.org/.

Cyber Monday! Save on the website...

I am continuing my Black Friday sale to include Cyber Monday!! 

Receive 20% off the entire website!

Enter coupon code BLACKFRIDAY when checking out in the shopping cart section of the website.

www.CascoBaySoap.com

Happy shopping!!

Body Butter, regularly $7.00 today $5.60 !!!

Sea Shell Soaps, regularly $8.00, today $6.40 !!

And of course, soap!  Regularly $4.00, today $3.20 !!!

Small Business Saturday!

Shop Small.  Shop Local.  Shop on Small Business Saturday.  Find soo many great items at your very own small, local shops.  You can find my soaps for sale all over the State of Maine, all small businesses. 

Shop Small Business Saturday at our Brunswick Winter Market Saturday November 26th ! I will be selling my soaps (as I do every Saturday) among 50+ other small, local businesses!

There are a few special events this weekend where you can find my soaps:

Bessie's Farm Goods, Litchfield Road, Freeport Holiday Open House and Craft Show Satyrday and Sunday, 9-4 each day.

Cat's Studio on the Hill, 5th Annual Creative Economy Holiday Sale, Pleasant Hill Road, Freeport. Friday, Saturday AND Sunday, 10-6:30 daily.

Hope to see you!!

Save on the website!

Good morning!

I'm having a 20% off sale on my entire website today to kick off the Holiday shopping season! Enter code BLACKFRIDAY in your shopping cart in the section "If you have a voucher or coupon, enter its code and click on RECALCULATE" area and the discount will be calculated. :) Happy shopping!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Close Buy Catalog Delivery

I loaded up my car for the last stage of my Close Buy Catalog fulfilment duty.  Off the boxes and I went to a local warehouse.   I enlisted a Friend to help me and she showed up right on time to help me load the car.  I thought that i may need to borrow some space in her car, but we fit it all in one.  Once at the warehouse, boxes were unloaded and placed on a pallet....

Here is all of Casco Bay Soap Co. items on one pallet on the left!  Look at that!!   I filled a pallet!  From here, the pallet will be shrink wrapped and sent to a larger warehouse and separated into separate piles of boxes for each school.   Then all the participating schools will receive their boxes and then the orders for each child will be picked and sent home with them.  HUGE JOB!  But soo worth it. 

here you can see many of the boxes, ready for their next phase of delivery...

And this is Masey, she is the brilliant woman that came up with this whole idea!

How Cool Is This?

I met a new customer at market on Sunday and they suggested I create a QR (Quick Response) Code (a type of Matrix bar code) for my business!  You see them everywhere now.  Magazine, posters, newspapers...I was surprised to find out that I could make one!  I created the code below and when snapped (using a SMART phone) links directly to my website.  I can use it on advertising or whatever I choose to send a direct link to my website!  How cool!  I am making something (a poster of some sort) so that when customers come across me at market, they can snap the code with their phone and be brought directly to my website.   Neat-o!! 

Naughty & Nice

NEW for the Holidays..Naughty & Nice!  Spicy Cloves mingle with Sweet Vanilla.  My favorite blend right now!  This first batch came out a bit more Nice (vanilla) than Naughty (the clove).   Do you know someone who is a little bit Naughty & Nice?  I will have this at the Farmers Market on Saturday.

A Bit About Close Buy Catalog 2011

Almost done with Close Buy Catalog orders for 2011!   I was very pleased with my sales with the catalog.  I prepared all summer long.  Making and storing soaps for the catalog and just not knowing how many orders would come in! Did you notice that Mermaids Garden and Sea Shore Scrub soaps were not available at market?  I was hoarding them!  Sorry about that!  (They were for sale via special request and on-line).  

I prepared and had some packaging on hand, but still had no idea how many soap 2 packs or laundry detergent would sell.  37 schools participated and that is a huge jump over the 3 schools from last year.  Once the orders were in, I had a little over 3 weeks to pull it all together.  I had to order more packaging, ribbon, bags and labels, but I expected to do this.  I didn't want to order more than I needed.  Putting the orders together in my new soap studio made a world of difference.  I have soo much more work space!  This allowed me to work on the project in stages.  Pull all the soaps, label all the soaps, assemble all the boxes, tie all the ribbons etc. and I could walk away at the end of the day and leave the project undisturbed for tomorrow. 

All the orders are put into one box per school.   Hannafords and Shaws have been great in giving me used boxes to pack my orders in and plain brown shopping bags to separate the different skus' inside each box.  Using re-purposed cardboard boxes is highly encouraged by Close Buy Catalog.  While we all did create alot of packaging, we are trying out best to keep it minimal, while keeping the whole thing organized.  Cute labels for the boxes were created by Close Buy Catalog and distributed to all the vendors.  Now all these mis-matched, re-purposed boxes will looks similar, with their bright and cheery red labels.

I deliver my boxes of soap and detergents to the Close Buy Catalog warehouse on Monday.  From there the boxes will be sorted by school and sent to their various towns across the state.  Teacher and Parent volunteerers then set up and pick the children's orders for distributing!  Quite a large undertaking!  I can't fit all the boxes in my car for delivery day, so a great friend has been enlisted to help me.  I will be sure to take pictures on delivery day. 

What a great experience and opportunity I had working with Close Buy Catalog!  I hope to be part of the catalog in 2012.   

Twisted Peppermint Soap!

On the shelf and curing for the Holidays...Twisted Peppermint is wonderfully minty and perfectly pink!

NEW Mermaid Shaped Soap...

Here she is!  A new shaped soap, a beautiful curvy Mermaid! 

I have been very busy gearing up for the Holidays and heard from a few of you that I had not been updating the blog...I didn't mean to leave you out of the loop!  Here I am! 

Very busy.  I will try to post more often.  Thanks for your support!  You can find more updates more often on my Face Book page:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Casco-Bay-Soap-Co/111673231116