Peanut Butter Cookies
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
The basis for this recipe is a very common “flourless peanut butter cookie” recipe you can find anywhere on the Internet. Here’s the most common version of this amazingly simple recipe:
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder (some versions)
Mix, drop spoonfuls on cookie sheet, and bake in a preheated (350 degree) oven for about 11 minutes.
What I’ve found is that you can do all sorts of interesting things with this recipe so you’re not eating the same cookie every time you bake. I’ve tried it with almond butter. I decided it was good, but would have been better with raw almond butter to start (it had a sort of over-roasted flavor after baking, though the dough was amazing). Sometimes I use chocolate chips. Sometimes I use peanut butter chips or vanilla chips. Sometimes I use crunchy, creamy, natural, or “partially hydrogenated” peanut butter. Sometimes I add the baking powder, and sometimes I leave it out. Sometimes I add oats, or a little rice flour. Sometimes I bake it a little less or a little more. They all work, and they all yield different results. The point is, you don’t have to be “stuck” to just one recipe.
Tonight’s recipe was as follows:
Start by pre-heating your oven to 350.
1 cup crunchy, natural peanut butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 Handful dark chocolate chips
Mix all ingredients except the chocolate chips together. Add those last after the other ingredients are combined. Otherwise they make it hard to get a nice, even mixture.
Next, use a small cookie scoop to place the cookies on a cookie sheet. This dough is really sticky-moist, not like a flour-based cookie dough at all. It’s super hard to work with, so don’t expect to be able to “roll” it into balls. If you don’t have a cookie scoop, just use a spoon and a clean finger, but you won’t get neat, round cookies that way.
Do not grease the pan. The peanut oil keeps them from sticking.
I love my Airbake pans, and you can see that mine is well-loved. I could almost fit the entire batch on one sheet. I had about 8 cookies worth of dough left over which I baked separately.
Bake for 13 minutes at 350. You can reduce the time slightly for a softer cookie if you wish, but these are pretty soft as it is. It’s important that you let them cool for a few minutes before you remove them from the sheet with a spatula, or they’ll break apart very easily. This is even more true if you don’t have any “powder” ingredients, usually flour of some kind, but in this case cocoa.
One last word of caution: Make sure all of your ingredients are gluten free. Today I used Trader Joe’s brand chocolate chips and cocoa powder. The vanilla is something my son bought in Mexico; I can’t verify its gluten free status other than the fact that I’ve never had a problem with it. It never hurts to contact a manufacturer and check, and in fact many food manufacturers have gluten and allergen statements on their websites now which is helpful. I often use Guittard brand baking chips (chocolate, peanut butter, etc.). Everything Guittard makes is gluten free so I know there’s no risk of cross-contamination.
