Beautiful day today.   Perfect Toronto Fall Day.  Weather: Sunny and 16 degrees C, trees: changing colour beautifully... great day for a run...
Today I ran the Toronto Half-Marathon.  My time was 2:03 (2 hours, 3 minutes).  Yeah, that's ok - next year will be even better.  I came home afterwards, had a good rest (watching my Sunday afternoon Bollywood *sigh* - with Salman Khan!) and then got to it and made these babies.


Let me back up just a little bit.  Yesterday was a bit of a run-around because the race people decided to change the chip at the last minute.  The chip is this bit that goes on your running shoe which clocks your time across the finish line and gives the final run time.  If you want to qualify for anything (like Boston or New York) then you gotta get a qualifying time.  Well, I noticed that my kit bag had no chip in it so I dragged the kids down to the Exhibition grounds to the Marathon Expo to find out what was what.  The marathon people had changed things at the last minute and not updated their website so I had everything that I needed and in the end it was all good.  However, by the time we got home we were exhausted


AND the lovely lemon slice that I'd bought earlier at the bakery was crushed in my bag.  :-(  Didn't let it stop me from eating though... it was delish.


These cookies really just happened because I got bored.  After the bollywood film I just didn't know what to do with my poor, sore body.  Everybody likes cookies when they come home from school (or work ;-) and so, tomorrow being Monday,  I thought I would put this together.  Really this is a recipe for peanut butter and jam thumbprints so feel free to substitute if you would rather.  I'll post directions for both chocolate or jam.  I just really felt like using some chocolate today.  Since I was making some of this up, I did screw up a little and my first batch of cookies were kind of looking like UFO's.


I pushed the bottom out of some of them... OOPS.  Dang they still tastes good though.  That's the fun part of making it up... right?


Peanut Butter and Jelly (or Chocolate) Thumbprints (about 2 doz)
from Canadian Living Magazine

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temp.
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup natural peanut butter
1/1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup grape jelly
OR
3 oz semi-sweet chocolate
1 1/2 tbsp corn syrup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment or a silicon mat.
Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside.
In a large bowl beat together the butter, brown sugar, sugar, egg and vanilla until fluffy.  Beat in the peanut butter until well combined.
Add in the flour mixture and mix well.  Drop by tablespoons, leaving about and inch of space between, onto the cookie sheet.  Make a criss-cross pattern with a fork (flour it if it's sticking too much) and with your thumb or the back of a spoon (I used a measuring spoon) make an indentation.
If you are using jelly then fill each indentation with a little bit of jelly and bake for about 10 min.


If you are using chocolate then:
Melt the chocolate and corn syrup together in a bowl over simmering water.  Bake the cookies for about 10 min.  Once out of the oven place a little of the melted chocolate in the indentation of each cookie.
Allow the cookies to cool completely.