Peanut Butter Cookies: a simpler cookie

Peanut butter cookies, for whatever reason, just feel easier to make than chocolate chip cookies. Maybe it’s that their cooking time isn’t as long, or that the batch is smaller, or that I can fit more onto a cookie sheet, or that the batter is easy enough to mix by hand, but this is a nice quick batch of cookies.

This recipe is from the standard red Betty Crocker cookbook with one key modification – I’ve replaced the shortening that recipe called for with butter, because I feel butter adds flavor while shortening is a fat with no value. This is an age old war in baking, and this is the side of it I tend to firmly stand on. I guess shortening has a place – I just haven’t found it yet.

Anyway, not a lot else to say about this recipe – peanut butter cookies are pretty much a standard most people have been having since they are kids, and this recipes produces a solid rendition of that.

Ingredients

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup peanut butter (I like creamy for cookies, but chunky would work too – it would just make a peanut butter cookie with nuts in it)

1 egg

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, left out to soften

1 1/4 cups flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375 F. In a bowl, mix the softened butter, the sugars, peanut butter, and the egg. Then, add in the flour, baking soda, and baking powder.

Then, when all this is done, form the dough into balls with 2 spoons, and press in a cross-hatch pattern using a fork. If you’d like, sprinkle a little granulated sugar on the top to form a coating. A standard cookie sheet can fit about 11 cookies (The arrangement pictures, as well as 3 more staggered as a center row)

Bake the cookies for about 7-9 minutes, checking them and pulling them at your desired level of browning. Cool the cookies on a paper towel, and enjoy fresh or for days later!