Chocolate-Peanut Butter Crinkle Cookies

I know that I already wrote about the wonders of cake mix-based crinkle cookies, but this is experimental twist turned out really great!  

I have had some peanut better extract (yes!  peanut butter extract!!!!) from Watkins since I bought it at the Minnesota State Fair last year.  I just hadn't figured out how to use it.  Last week I was tidying up my spices and extracts on my counter and found a stray bottle top, which I threw away.  I thought it was from a bottle of vanilla that I had finished recently.  WRONG!  It was from my peanut butter extract, which luckily still had an intact seal. Ack!  Also luckily, however, I still had the empty vanilla bottle mixed in with my other stuff.  I washed it out as thoroughly as possible and transferred the peanut butter extract to it.

But now that the exotic PB extract was on my radar, I needed to figure out a way to use it.  I was already going to make a batch of cookies for my buddies working at the Half Price Books during the big November coupon sale, so I decided they would include PB flavor.  Crinkle cookies are always a favorite and they are pretty forgiving of small experiments, in my experience, so they were the perfect choice.  

Here are the details....

Ingredients:

• 1 Devil's Food cake mix 
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp. Watkins Peanut Butter Extract 
• granulated sugar 

Instructions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees 
2. Mix cake mix, eggs, extract and oil with a spoon in a large bowl.  The dough will be a bit sticky.
3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and roll in sugar. Granulated will make the cookies more sparkly and it is what I did in this case (mostly because peanut butter cookies usually have granulated on them!).  But you can certainly use powdered sugar, if you want
• Tip: A lot of people have written online about how the sugar "sinks" into the cookies as they bake and it isn't very visible in the finished product.  To help with this, roll all the balls in sugar and place on cookie sheet.  Then go back and roll each ball around in your hands again, embedding that layer of sugar into the cookie, and then immediately roll it in sugar again.  
4. Place dough balls about 2 inches apart on ungreased or parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.
5. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set.
6. Cool for a minute or so on cookie sheet and then cool completely on wire rack or on waxed paper.  Or, if they are on parchment paper, just slide the parchment off onto a table or counter for cooling.