Cakegirl and Baby Cake Collaborate!

So, this afternoon my darling daughter (Baby Cake) and I were looking through an issue of Rachael Ray Magazine when we stumbled upon a recipe for Peanut Butter Pretzel Cookies. Baby Cake remarked "I like chocolate pretzels though." Which got me to thinking....how could I combine those flavors? Baby Cake and I decided to experiment with different options.
Now, generally I don't experiment with baked goods. In fact, this is the first baked good I've ever created a recipe for. Let me share my oh-so-scientific findings with you: (oh, and you'll also see I had the cutest sous chef ever assisting me - my beautiful Baby Cake!)

So, we started with a basic peanut butter cookie base. We also got to work breaking up small pieces of pretzels. (We prefer Rold Gold brand around here.)

Then we whisked together 1 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 tsp of baking soda.

Next, we beat 1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, 1 1/4 cups sugar, and 1 cup of peanut butter in my beloved Kitchen Aid Mixer, till fluffy. (About 5 minutes.)

Then beat in two eggs (one at a time), and slowly add the flour mixture. Then I put Baby Cake to work unwrapping 12 Dove Chocolate Caramels. (Isn't she ridiculously cute??) She may have sampled 1 or 2....

Then we scooped a heaping tablespoon of dough into her hand, where she then tucked a Dove chocolate.

 Then we rolled it in the bowl of pretzel pieces and set it on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

We baked them for about 17 minutes. A little caramel leaked out of the bottom of a few of them.

We thought they tasted a bit like a Take 5 Candy bar (one of our favorites.)
 Then, on to part two of our experiment.
To the remaining dough we added a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

We scooped them and rolled these ones in the pretzel bits as well. Then they were placed on the baking sheet.

After about 17 minutes, we took them out to cool.

SEE PART TWO OF MY POST! (for some reason it would only allow me to use a certain number of pics in this post!!)