Peanut Butter Cookies

In an effort to curb some of my lunchtime spending, I picked up a decent-quality loaf of bread, peanut butter, and I already had jelly at home. A week of these budget lunches would do me some good.


I'm very picky about peanut butter.
There's a lot of junk in the usual brands, so that's one product I usually take time to read the label. I don't want any kind of hydrogenated oil or palm oil—both are quite bad (palm oil being quite controversial ecological nightmare) and an oily food like peanut butter hardly needs additional oil—I can do without stabilizer. No sugar, no salt. I just want plain roasted peanuts on the ingredients list.


Next step, pour out the oil before you give it a good stir. You can pour out about half and still have a nice creamy consistency. On this particular jar of creamy "old fashioned" I poured out too much and the peanut butter was too thick and a bit on the dry side. I could tell because when it came time to stir it up, it wasn't very smooth, and the surface developed cracks. Well... Shit.


That's fine! I went back to the shop and got another jar, this time crunchy peanut butter, and slowly poured off some of the peanut oil into the first jar. Problem solved. Now I have 2 kinds—smooth and crunchy. Both are perfect.


What do you do with that much peanut butter? After only two pbj sandwiches, I was honestly already tired of it. Well, what's my answer to most of my problems? Make cookies.

(Photo from my Instagram. Are you following me? "inlandempirical")

From Joy of Baking 

Peanut Butter Cookies

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature 
1/2 cup light brown sugar 
1/2 cup granulated white sugar 
1 large egg 
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 
3/4 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy) 
2 cups all purpose flour 
1/2 teaspoon baking soda 
1/4 teaspoon salt 


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place rack in center of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 


In the bowl of your electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy.


Beat in the peanut butter. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat to combine. 


In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to the peanut butter mixture and beat until incorporated. 


If the batter is too soft to form into balls, place in the refrigerator for about an hour or until firm. Roll the dough into 1 inch balls. Transfer the cookies to the prepared baking sheet, placing about 2 inches apart. Then, using the tines of the fork that has been dipped in white granulated sugar, make a crisscross pattern. Bake the cookies for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly browned around the edges. 


Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.


Makes about 40 cookies.






This is by far the most successful recipe I've made. It made 40 perfectly sized cookies. The only places I strayed: used dark brown sugar instead of light, used an extra large egg, used a combination of crunchy and creamy peanut butters resulting in a cookie that was less salty, sweet, and oily than intended. It was a hit with friends, family, coworkers. I'm going to give it one more try with this modification: Press down on the dough balls with palms before the fork indentation to make a flatter cookie that's less prone to breaking under the pressure of the fork tines. I also might be less afraid to use more pressure when rolling them out. I was afraid they'd be too dense but this is an easy-to-work-with cookie dough and I'd like to try rolling them tighter.


I highly suggest you click over to Joy of Baking's website for Stephanie Jaworski's video walkthrough and for additional notes on this recipe.