Peanut Butter Cookies
The first year that we moved into this apartment, we had a big problem with maintaining adequate heat. There were a few days where we were hovering around 14 degrees. So they patched up the basement, insulated it a bit and threw a heater down there to try and help us out. Unfortunately, this meant all the mice that were living in the basement were now looking for a new escape route and decided to enter our apartment.
The amount of mice that we’ve caught since has been in the dozens. I think we’ve effectively eradicated them and otherwise patched up all the entryways for the meantime, but when we were initially looking into the most effective traps, we read that the best bait for them was peanut butter.
So we bought a big jar of Kraft peanut butter while it was on sale and, I believe the very next day, purchased a bunch of peanut butter scented glue traps and promptly had no use for the peanut butter anymore. Now before you criticize me, I would like to note that we originally tried to capture the mice humanly. It just happens that the humane traps are completely ineffective. Even when purchasing the glue traps, we had read that you can use mineral oil to stop the adhesive, and we had planned to set them free.
The problem with this is that the mice would only get themselves stuck during the night, when we weren’t about to walk far enough way that they wouldn’t find their way back. Really, how humane is it to release them into a wild part of town anyway? Even if this was a suitable solution, they would often break their legs or necks or otherwise injure themselves trying to get free by the time we found them.
So, uh… now that I’ve whet your appetites, there’s been this jar of Kraft peanut butter sitting in our cupboard since last year. When I buy peanut butter, I buy the natural kind. Sure, the oil separates and it can be a pain in the ass to spread once you hit the bottom of the jar, but it tastes like nuts and doesn’t have any hydrogenated oils in it. However, a bit of hydrogenation is key if you’re looking to make peanut butter cookies or they just spread all over the place and make an oily mess (as I learned the hard way). Thus: peanut butter cookies, criss-crossed with a fork the way my grandma taught me.
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups peanut butter
- 1 cup (200g) white sugar
- 1 cup (180g) brown sugar
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 3 cups (360g) all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- In a large bowl, cream together the butter, peanut butter, white and brown sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until not a trace of flour is visible. Cover the bowl and refrigerate it for at least an hour, or overnight if you wish.
- Remove the cookie dough from the fridge and preheat the oven to 350 degrees with an oven rack positioed in the center.
- Roll the dough into one ounce (1″) balls. Arrange twelve balls, evenly spaced, on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Press in a criss-cross pattern with a fork (this is not only decorative, but prevents them from puffing up) and bake until golden brown, about 13 or 14 minutes.
- Transfer the baked cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely and repeat with the remaining dough.
This recipe makes approximately 48 one ounce cookies.
That’s my favorite, peanut butter! I read some recipes about baking that involves peanut butter. I want to try this one but I’m afraid that it will not be as perfect as this.