Peanut Butter Cookies
Normally my husband is the peanut butter cookie maker in our house. He uses the recipe out of Joy of Cooking and makes, oh, roughly seven thousand of them every Christmas. We never had peanut butter cookies when I was a kid because my mom didn’t make cookies, and even if she had, she didn’t like peanut butter, so she wouldn’t have made them. My exposure to peanut butter cookies was via the Grandma’s packaged cookies in convenience stores.
Peanut butter cookies have always seemed a little weird to me because I’m more of a Toll House gal, where you blop the dough out onto the sheets and bake them. The idea of actually handling cookie dough and rolling it into balls is a bit foreign.
However, a couple of days ago, the cookie cupboard was bare, and I was casting about for a new cookie recipe. I flipped through some books but everything that looked appealing called for the dough to be mixed up then chilled for 30+ minutes. I was on a deadline, so I needed something that required no chilling.
From an earlier round of cooking, I had Martha Stewart’s Favorite Comfort Foods lying on the counter, and I paged through to find out what kinds of cookies La Martha recommended. The choices were Gingersnap Raspberry Sandwiches (which I knew would earn a lip curl from the whole gang), Chocolate Chip (which I didn’t want to make; we’d just finished a batch and I wanted something new), Oatmeal Raisin (which I don’t like much; I can’t help but agree with Lilly in Julius, The Baby of the World that “. . . raisins taste like dirt . . .”), and finally Peanut Butter. By a happy coincidence one of our nannies had just bought two enormous jars of peanut butter at the grocery store because she thought we were out, not realizing that we had a Costco double pack of equally enormous jars in the pantry.
Peanut butter cookies are actually a great thing to make with kids because you do play with the dough. My three-year-old twins thought it was pretty neat that we made balls of cookie dough and then got to smush them with a fork. I skipped the chopped peanuts that the recipe suggested you could scatter over the top of them and just left them plain. They came out golden and tender, with enough peanut butter flavor to realize you were eating peanut butter cookies, but not so much that it smacked you in the taste buds screaming about it. If you sometimes find the peanut butter flavor overpowering (I do), this is a good recipe for you to try.
I also like that it only makes two dozen cookies. Two baking sheets, they both go in the oven at the same time, and they can be eaten up in a couple of days. In our house larger batches of cookies can hang around for a while because the enthusiasm for that flavor wears off quickly. “What, again?” seems to be the mood when we have a lot of a certain kind of cookie. I did find that I needed about an additional 1/4 cup of flour; the dough just seemed too sticky when I finished mixing it all up. I’m adding the additional quarter cup in the instructions, with the caveat that you may not need it.
This recipe earned three thumbs up, and one thumbs down (however, consider that the thumbs down came from a five-year-old who doesn’t like peanut butter in any form, which I think may actually be illegal in some states). So for those inclined to eat peanut butter cookies in my house, we had a unanimous vote in the affirmative for these.
Enjoy!
Peanut Butter Cookies
from Martha Stewart’s Favorite Comfort Foods
makes 2 dozen
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3/4 cup smooth peanut butter (crunchy may also be used)
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 to 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- Dry-roasted, salted peanuts, for sprinkling (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 and line two baking sheets with parchment. Set aside
In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, peanut butter, and both sugars until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla, and mix on medium speed until well combined.
In a medium mixing bowl, sift 1 cup flour and baking soda together (full disclosure: I did not sift - I just added them both to the mixer and hoped for the best). Add to the butter mixture, and beat to combine. The dough should be slightly sticky, but not so sticky that you can’t roll it into balls. If this is the case, add the additional 1/4 cup flour and mix it in.
Scoop the dough out in tablespoons and shape into balls. Place on the prepared baking sheets, about 3 inches apart. Dip the tines of a fork in warm water and press the dough balls down lightly with the back of the fork to flatten slightly (dip the fork back in the water for each dough ball, to prevent sticking). Sprinkle with a few peanuts, if desired.
Place sheets in the preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, or until golden, rotating sheets between the shelves halfway through baking. Transfer sheets to a wire rack to cool. Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.
Picture by The Modern Apron
