Today’s baking project includes a special guest helper- my nephew!

He’s on spring break so we got to spend a day with him and in his honor I decided to theme this week’s baking project around pb&j… this entry actually has TWO projects in one- the PB is Peanut butter cookies:

These are great to make with kids because there’s only three ingredients that are readily available, and mixing the batter and getting your hands dirty is a ton of fun, plus the fork marks are really fun, really easy ways to help.

Of course, my nephew didn’t think it counted as real baking unless he got to roll out some dough, so we made some Jelly tarts- also super simple. I learned from my pie attempt that I could probably make a simple crust with a few cups of flour, a stick of butter, and a few tablespoons of milk or water- and a dash of sugar of course!. We then filled them with different kinds of jams. They were a great sweet companion to the peanut butter cookies. Just to make them extra pretty we cut some heart shapes out of extra dough:

Because aesthetics…

We ended up making 2 kinds of peanut butter cookies based on this blog post that suggested how to change put he traditional simple recipe to something softer and richer!

Everyone ate too fast for me capture a good action shot but my nephew reviewed the creations as “MMMM”, “YUM!” and “I can’t pick a favorite!”

All three of these recipes go great with a large glass of milk!