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You voted, and the winner of the cookie for this month’s Cookie of the Month Club subscription was chocolate covered ritz peanut butter sandwiches, or as my family calls them: Bark cookies.

For the record, I really wanted to make Meltaways. Buuut I know my dad and Grandpa will really love getting a big package of these babies.

Also, mind didn’t turn out as pretty as Spoon Fork Bacon’s rendition (photo above). But, I used dark chocolate instead of almond bark and whole wheat crackers. They taste the same, and they’re covered in chocolate, so nobody is ever going to be able to tell I healthed these up a little bit. A little bit. They are still chocolate covered ritz crackers with peanut butter.

If you’re interested in making these, you don’t put much peanut butter on the inside. A little dab will do you. Same with the chocolate. And using a double boiler (or my makeshift double boiler — hot water in a pan with my pyrex bowl of chocolate on top) is the best method to keep the viscosity of the chocolate good for dipping.

I made about 60 of these. For the record, I ate 4.

In case anybody is counting, these are 4 points +. Per cookie. Try not to eat more than one.

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I have a problem. I’ve pinned too many cookies on Pinterest.

I have so many I want to try.

The good news is that I can’t eat most of them (gluten) and I gave my dad and grandpa a “cookie of the month” subscription for Christmas. Which means I’m making a batch of cookies to mail to them every month this year.

Now which cookie should I make? Can you help me out? I can’t decide. Vote for the one I should make.

If I get a lot of participation with the voting this month, I might turn this into a giveaway (as in you’ll get your own bunch of cookies mailed to you as well). This is going to be a monthly voting conundrum I feel.

The Contenders

Chocolate Ritz Peanut Butter Cookies (we call them bark cookies) 

Cinnamon M&M Oatmeal Cookies

Meltaways

White Chocolate Topped Gingerbread Cookies

The Voting

Voting closes on January 10. I’ll announce what cookie won on January 15.

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What happens when advertising and our obsession with making everything from scratch leads to bad ideas?

This.

Nutter butter blizzards. Kind of. We were drooling over these at DQ a couple of months back when these were the special blizzard of the month. I refused to spend $5 for a small cup of ice cream. So instead I went to the grocery store and got a box of (double stuffed) nutter butters and some vanilla ice cream. I got out the blender, put most of the ice cream and nutter butters and a little bit of milk in there, hit blend, and voila! Blizzards. Probably more naughty than the ones you get at DQ considering how many nutter butters I generously added. They always skimp on the candy part of the blizzard.

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So I love Pinterest. Did I ever mention that? I have a ton of boards, but one that’s always growing is my dessert board. So many naughty decadent things on there that I will probably never make.

I present to you the most naughty-looking desserts that I’ve got pinned for possible future binging.

1. Sweet, Salty, Chewy and Crunchy Brownies
   
   Holy lord these look naughty. I just ran across these the other day. Caramels, pretzels, peanuts and cream. These are actually too naughty-looking for me to attempt baking.
2. Dutch Apple Cheesecake
   
   Apple pie + cheesecake? Yes. Please.
3. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream Cake
   
   Wow. That’s all I have to say. It’s too much for me … doesn’t look appetizing, but would be fun to make.
4. Homemade Samoas (Girl Scout Cookies)
   
   These look awesome. I think I want to try making these. It would be  interesting to see how I can modify them to have them be healthier than GS cookies (ie. less processed crap and more whole ingredients).
5. Cadbury Creme Egg-Filled Cupcakes
   
   Whoever thought to do this was a mad genius.  I don’t know if I can bring myself to do it, but awesome.
6. Snickers Caramel Cheesecake Cookies
   
   There are no words.
7. Vanilla  Bean Latté Cupcakes
   
   Any filled cupcake is just plain naughty. These look beautiful and delish.
8. Toffee Brittle with Chocolate and Sea Salt
   
   Yum. Sweet+salty=awesome
9. Hot Chocolate Layer Cake with Marshmallows
   
   Just look at the thickness of frosting on this. Whoa.
10. Peanut Butter Cup and Pretzel Terrine
    
    I actually made this for Mark’s birthday last year and made it NAUGHTIER. It was awesome. A nice option for a birthday instead of a cake in the hot summer months.

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I got a brilliant idea for Mark’s birthday cake from Real Simple.  Of course, I had to modify the recipe, but the main idea is based on this recipe.

I asked Mark what kind of cake he wanted, and we talked a little about ice cream cakes and Better than Sex cake (for those of you who don’t know what that is, Google it!).  But I remembered flagging a page in Real Simple a couple months back with a way to make vanilla ice cream not so boring by adding layers of peanut butter cups and pretzels. I also remembered that Mark’s been bugging me to try Chubby Hubby by Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and I think that pretzels in ice cream sounds gross.

So, I decided to create an ice cream cake of my own.

I used a pyrex bread pan and lined the bottom with a half inch of vanilla ice cream. The next layer was peanut butter pretzel sandwiches, then an inch of ice cream, then crumbled peanut butter cups, then more ice cream, a layer of chocolate/peanut butter ganache and more pretzels.

It was GLORIOUS. It’s not technically his birthday until tomorrow, but since we knew we were going to be out of town this weekend, we decided to cut into it a bit early …

Look at that giant hunk of chocolate at the top. om. nom. NOM.

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