Black Bean Hummus

Courtesy of AllRecipes.com

Ingredients
* 1 clove garlic
* 1 (15 ounce) can black beans; drain and reserve liquid
* 2 teaspoons lemon juice
* 1 1/2 tablespoons tahini
* 1 teaspoon ground cumin
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon paprika
* 1/4 teaspoon of Garam Masala

Directions

1. Puree black beans, garlic and lemon juice.
2. Add reserve liquid as need to perfect texture.
3. Add tahini and spices to taste.
4. Process until smooth.

Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

Recipe from OurBestBites

1 C butter flavored Crisco
1 C creamy peanut butter
1 C sugar
1 C packed brown sugar
1 t vanilla
3 eggs
3 C flour
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt

filling:
1 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 c real butter, softened
4 C powdered sugar
2 t vanilla
5-6 T milk

For the cookies:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream shortening, peanut butter, and sugars together until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes).
Add in vanilla, and eggs one at a time.
In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt and add to dough. Mix to combine. The dough will be very soft- that's normal!

Roll into balls, roll in sugar, place on cookie sheet (no need to grease it) and do the little forky criss-cross thing.

Now, not only are these cookies doubly sweet because they're sandwiched, but the dough spreads, so make your balls small. I use a regular size 40 cookie scoop and I separate each scoop of dough in half to form 2 cookies, and they're still pretty good sized. A mini scoop is perfect.

Okay, so pop the cookies into the oven and bake for 6-7 minutes. You want them to say super soft, so don't let them get brown. In my oven, and for the size of cookies I do, 6 minutes exactly is perfect. Remove them from pan and cool on a cooling rack.

To make the filling:
Whip the peanut butter and butter together until smooth. Add powdered sugar and vanilla. Then add milk one T at a time. You may not need it all. You want the filling to be on the thick side, it should just have enough milk in it to make it easily spreadable. If you add too much milk (like a normal frosting consistency) it might squish out of the cookies when you take a bite.

I put the filling in a piping bag, or a hefty zip-lock with the edge cut off to make filling easy. Place filling on one cookie and sandwich another on top. I designed the recipe to have enough filling to be generous :)

With the size I do, I get about 8 dozen cookies, which makes about 4 dozen sandwiches.

Just a note: I think these are actually even better the 2nd day. The flavors mellow together and you get a cool sweet n' saltly thing going on. Plus, after they sit with the filling in them, the cookies get really soft. Mmmm...