Jack Sparrow's Tricorne

The weather is sunny once again, so I'll be continuing with last posts's pirate theme. I realized that I didn't make a single reference to Pirates of the Caribbean in my last post, which is odd because when I think "pirates," Disney's POTC always comes to mind. Well, I'll make up for that today since I made Tricorne Cookies.

[map of Piri Reis in background found on Google Images]

What's a tricorne? It's a three cornered hat that was popular back in the early 18th century. An example of this style of headwear is of course Jack Sparrow's hat. I had a bag of peanut butter cups lying around and I thought it would be cute to make little chocolate pirate hat cookies stuffed with PB cups, like nuggets of hidden treasure in each hat. On another note, did you know that there's going to be a fourth movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (May 2011)? I just found out today as I was Wikipedia-ing info on Jack's hat. Enjoy!

[ballpoint pen on a large index card, referenced from Disney movie poster]

Pirate Tricorne Cookies
adapted from The Cookie and Biscuit Bible

1 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 2/3 cup flour
2 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
24 miniature peanut butter cups

Cream the butter and brown sugar together. Mix in the egg. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and cocoa powder together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and combine. Scrape the cookie dough onto a piece of plastic wrap. Fold over the plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Take the dough, place it between two pieces of plastic wrap, and roll it out to 1/8-inch thick. Cut out 2 5/8-inch and 2 1/4-inch circles. Gather the scraps, roll them out to 1/8-inch, and continue cutting out circles until there are 24 2 5/8-inch circles and 24 2 1/4-inch circles. Take a 2 5/8-inch circle and place an unwrapped peanut butter cup on it (with the larger side down). Place a 2 1/4-inch circle of dough on top of the candy. Seal the smaller piece of dough to the larger one. Fold in three sides of the larger circle and pinch the three corners.

Place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Repeat with the other dough circles. Chill the baking sheet in the fridge for 10 minutes. Once chilled, take the sheet out and use a knife to make a light "X" in the center of each side of the hat cookies. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool on baking tray. They taste best when slightly warm and the chocolate is still a bit melted. Once cooled, they can be warmed up again for a couple of seconds in the microwave before serving, if desired.

Makes 24 cookies.