Tag: peanut butter

Yet Another Peanut Butter Cookie, Soft and Chewy

Yet Another Peanut Butter Cookie, Soft and Chewy

Peanuttttt, peanut butter….cookie!  If asked what my favorite cookies are, Shortbread, Snickerdoodles, and Thumbprints immediately come to mind.  Peanut Butter Cookies would not make the cut and yet a quick search of 3Jamigos will reveal more than a few recipes for peanut butter cookies.  This leads to my 🤦🏻‍♀️ forehead slap moment  “I LOVE peanut butter cookies, they should be on my fav list.” Life’s little epiphanies.

The other night our postcard posse reconvened to write cards for Reverend Warnock in Georgia.  How he is in a run-off with Hershel Walker is beyond me and beyond the scope of this blog.  I made a half-hearted promise to keep this site apolitical.  Just food, friends, and fluff.  So in the immortal words of Forest Gump… “that’s all I have to say about that.”

For our postcard session against He who shall not be named, my friend’s daughter, Avery, of Kentucky Butter Cake fame, dropped off some just baked Peanut Butter Cookies for our crew.  I’m sure in solidarity and because she loves to bake (and she is darn good at it).

One Bite…

and I knew there was going to be yet another peanut butter cookie recipe on 3Jamigos.  Yep, Avery’s PB Cookies were tender, chewy in the center, super peanut buttery, sweet, and salty, and just darn delicious.  I got on the horn (ok, I texted) faster than you can say Mr. Planter’s Peanuts and asked “can I PLEASEEE have the recipe”.

Lucky Her Mom Likes Me

Voila’ the recipe showed up in my text message, lickity-split.  Adapted from a very cute blog Dessert Now Dinner Later, the recipe for Thick and Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies is easy and does not require chilling before baking.  You can have a batch of these bad boys done in less than an hour.

I use King Arthur flour which has a higher protein than GM or Pillsbury.  Feel free to bake off a test cookie, if it spreads too much, add a bit of flour.

Cream the butter and sugar for 1-2 minutes until it is well blended and smooth looking, not fluffy.

Add the peanut butter, egg, and vanilla.  If you like more texture, feel free to use chunky peanut butter.  Beat until well combined.

Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed just until combined with no remaining traces of flour.  Do not overbeat as this will toughen the cookie.

Use a #40 scoop (approximately 1.6 tablespoons) and place the dough on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.  Bake one sheet at a time.  Cause that’s how I roll or row actually, lol.  The final cookies will be just shy of 3 inches in diameter.

The cookies on top were baked for 12 minutes.  The cookies on the bottom with sprinkles, about 11 minutes.

This would be a lovely holiday cookie to gift or for Santa along with an ice-cold glass of milk or a hot toddy (don’t tell the kids).

Peanut Butter Cookies

A thick but tender Peanut Butter Cookie that is delicious and easy to make!
Course cookies, Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword Dessert Now, Dinner Later, easy recipe, peanut butter, Peanut Butter Cookies
Prep Time 15 minutes

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Ingredients to Cream together

  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter softened
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup light brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter or chunky if you like I use Skippy Natural Style peanut butter
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Options

  • chocolate chips or sprinkles, raw sugar, Maldon Salt

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lined cookie sheets with parchment or silpat. (note silpats retain heat, check cookies a minute or two earlier.
  • In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, using a whisk.
  • Cream the butter and sugars together in the bowl of a stand mixer for 1-2 minutes until well combined. Batter should be smooth and creamy not fluffy which would give you cakey cookies. Use the paddle attachment.
  • Add the peanut butter, egg, and vanilla. Mix well and scrape the bowl.
  • Add flour mixture to the butter mixture all at once and mix on low speed just until incorporated.
  • Scoop dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets about 2 inches apart. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes or until just set*.
  • Allow cookies to cool slightly on the sheet for approximately 2 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. Store cookies in an airtight container.

Notes

For softer, chewier cookies, bake approximately 10 minutes, +/- 30 seconds.  The cookies will not color much and the top may still have some sheen.  The cookies will continue to bake outside the oven.  
For a denser, cookie that's a bit crumbly (in a good way), bake for 12 minutes.  The cookies will have some color on top and the edge.  The bottoms will be a bit darker.
Feel free to embellish. Add mini-chocolate chips to dough or add sprinkles.  I use a blend of dark chocolate sprinkles, Demerara Sugar or raw sugar, and a sprinkle of Maldon Salt.
Peanut Butter Mochi, that’s my Jam

Peanut Butter Mochi, that’s my Jam

My cookbook addiction continues unabated. One of my new favorites is A Common Table by Cynthia Chen McTernan.  It’s a beautiful cookbook filled with not only mouthwatering photographs of her food but wonderful stories about her family and friends. Her recipes are approachable and her writing inviting.  In contrast to the cookbooks of yesteryear, today’s cookbooks, like A Common Table, breathe life, warmth, and a personal connection into each recipe.  It makes me want to call my Mom, my kids, my aunties and uncles and say, “Hey, come on over we gonna cook, eat, and talk story”.

Have You Eaten Yet? (code for I ❤️ you)

This is not a cookbook that strives to teach one to cook, it’s more like a series of love letters, first and foremost to her family and friends, and then to all of us.  Her soulful, homey food reflects her southern upbringing, her Chinese heritage, her hubby’s Hawaiian-Korean-Irish roots, and their lives together. These are recipes I imagine are passed down from grandmother to mother and mother to daughter.  Each generation adding its own personal stamp.

Two Red Bowls is Cynthia’s blog, ground zero for her food and family tales.  She has managed to juggle a toddler, a newborn, a blog, and a book, no small feat.  Wow!

Onto her delicious food.  Needing a gluten-free dessert to bring to a potluck, I instantly thought of the peanut butter mochi in her book.  Mochi, made of glutinous rice flour, is chewy, dense, and all the craze right now.  Imagine a marshmallow but dense, chewy, and only slightly sweet. Mallows on roids.  To top it off, soooo easy to make.  Literally, one bowl plus a wooden spoon. The addition of peanut butter brings a familiar flavor and texture to the mochi, a great intro for the uninitiated.  Did I mention GLUTEN FREE?

The gold standard for rice flour and readily available is Koda Farms Blue Star Mochiko.  Ground into a fine powder, it blends quickly and is easy to work with. Throw the flour, sugar, eggs, and milk in a bowl.  Stir, don’t worry about overmixing (no gluten), pour, and bake.  The batter will resemble a thick, elastic pancake batter.

Plop the peanut butter evenly into the batter so that everyone gets a bite of peanut butter, and then it’s oven time.  Midway through baking, sprinkle crushed peanuts on top.  Next time I am thinking of using honey-roasted peanuts, to really accentuate the play on sweet and salty.  The batter will puff while baking, not to worry, it will flatten as the mochi is cooling.

Once it has cooled a bit, dig in, warm mochi is yummy.  I cut mine into squares and then further divided half of the squares into rectangular bars.  Just so delicious, the combo of chewy mochi, pockets of oozy soft peanut butter, and the crunchy peanut topping-the trifecta of yum.  It’s hard to resist and eat just one. It’s dense in texture and calories but so worth it!

I think you could make this milk-free by using coconut milk in place of milk. I have yet to try it.  Andrea Nguyen, Asian cookbook author extraordinaire created a riff by adding black sesame paste, Black Sesame Peanut Butter Mochi, which looks delish, I am so going to make her version soon.

Peanut Butter Mochi
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5 from 2 votes

Peanut Butter Mochi

Gluten free and delicious.  Made with sweet rice flour a dense, chewy, a totally addicting treat! A quick and easy recipe!
Course Dessert, Snack
Cuisine Asian, Asian-American
Keyword Mochi, peanut butter, sweet rice flour
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 50 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
Servings 16 Servings

Ingredients

Filling

  • 6 Tbsp Peanut butter Natural, creamy or chunky
  • 2 Tbsp Powdered sugar

Cake

  • 1-1/2 Cups Sweet rice flour 225gm
  • 3/4 Cup Granulated sugar
  • 1/8 Tsp Salt
  • 1 Cup Whole milk
  • 1/2 Cup Vegetable oil
  • 2 Eggs
  • 1 Tsp Vanilla
  • 1/2 Cup Roasted peanuts Or substitute honey roasted peanuts
  • 1 Tbsp Brown sugar Optional, to be added to plain roasted peanuts,

Instructions

  • For the peanut butter filling, whisk together the peanut butter and confectioner’s sugar until smooth. Set aside.
  • Preheat the oven to 350F. Line an 8-inch square baking dish with parchment paper, letting the paper go up the sides so you can easily lift the cake out later on.
  • In a medium bowl, combine the sweet rice flour, sugar, milk, oil, eggs, and vanilla, whisk until smooth. Don’t worry about overworking the batter when making the cake, sweet rice flour is GLUTEN FREE.
  • Pour half the batter into the prepared baking dish. Used 2 small spoons or small teaspoon ice cream scoop to drop spoonfuls of the filling evenly across the batter, then pour the remaining batter over the filling. Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
  • While the mochi is baking, place the peanuts in a food processor or blender and pulse until finely chopped. Remove the mochi cake from the oven, sprinkle of the crushed peanuts across the top. The cake maybe puffy so spread nuts as evenly as you can. The cake will fall as it cools.  
  • Return the cake to the oven and bake until the center bounces back when pressed, an additional 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool about 20 minutes before trying to lift the parchment paper to remove the cake from the pan. 
  • Enjoy warm or at room temperature. The mochi slices cleanly when cool, but is delish warm.
  • Store in an airtight container and keep at room temp if cool, or refrigerate. Microwave pieces on high with 15-second blasts to refresh.
A Ridiculously Easy Peanut Butter Cookie

A Ridiculously Easy Peanut Butter Cookie

Are you ready to start baking for the holidays?  I tried two new cookie recipes yesterday to take to our annual holiday cookie swap and both are winners.  We started our swap way back when the kids were in pre-school and through the years we have managed to keep the tradition alive.  Our early gatherings were during the day with kids and babies in tow but have now morphed into a mom’s happy hour. We eat, drink, catch up on what we are doing as well as the kids and of course trade cookies.  Amazing how quickly 17 years have flown by.

The first thing you should know is that both recipes are STUPID EASY.  My favorite cooking category.  If you are looking for cookies that are delicious and will illicit oohs and aahs, look no further. Oh, did I mention they are both GLUTEN FREE?  BAM! The trifecta.  I did not choose them because of that, they just happen to be gluten free. Here is the first one, Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies.

FlourlessPeanutButter

To go along with these crazy good cookies here is a Peanuts favorite The Charlie Brown Christmas Song sung by Mariah Carey.

 

As the song is playing, pullout the peanut butter (smooth or chunky), brown sugar, white sugar, baking soda, vanilla and 1 egg.  That’s all you need for this recipe!  I found multiple versions of this recipe online and adapted the one from Our Best Bites.  These cookies are soft, chewy and scream peanut butter flavor.  You can add chocolate to take it to another level, its entirely up to you.  Enjoy!

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup peanut butter smooth or chunky
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I use 1/2 cup white sugar & 1/4 cup golden brown sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon table salt
  • Sugar for rolling
  • Chocolate chunks I use the chunks from TJs, you can use chips if you like
  • optional: heaping 1/2 cup chopped chocolate or chocolate chips I recommend dark or semi-sweet

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  • Combine peanut butter and sugars and until smooth (1-2 minutes on medium speed).
  • Add egg, vanilla, baking soda, and salt. Mix for about a minute.
  • If adding chocolate, fold into dough now. Chocolate is optional, really.
  • Using a tablespoon ice cream scoop, scoop and shape dough into balls, roll in sugar.
  • Place balls on parchment lined cookie sheet, approximately 11/2 inches apart.
  • Using a fork, flatten with a criss cross pattern, or simply flatten with the bottom of a glass.
  • Press one chocolate chunk or chip into the center of cookie after flattening the dough.
  • Bake for 8-9 minutes, don’t overbake!
  • Let them sit on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Makes approximately 2 dozen cookies. Recipe can be doubled easily.

 

Milk and Cookies Anyone? (Peanut Butter Cookies)

Milk and Cookies Anyone? (Peanut Butter Cookies)

Lately I have been on a  peanut butter kick.   Slathered on apple wedges, chunks of banana, in celery to make it edible, or a pbj sandwich when I am off for a bike ride or at a regatta. It is eminently convenient, a great energy and protein source and the added bonus, a pbj sammie makes me feel like a kid again.  If you are old enough, you’ll remember the giant peanut butter cookies that every self-respecting school cafeteria sold back in the day.  Peanut Butter Cookies from the Buttery in Santa Cruz remind me of those cookies, big, chewy and peanutty. The recipe first printed by the LA times can be found via the blog, Ipso Fatto. What sets these cookies apart is rolling the dough in peanuts before baking.  It adds extra texture to an already buttery, salty, crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside cookie, double yums.  The recipe calls for pastry flour, I used White Lilly AP flour, a soft wheat flour found in the South (perks of having a kid in Nashville).  Used for biscuits, it has a lower protein content similar to pastry flour.  I also used a low sodium crunchy peanut butter, not a health conscious decision,  I just picked up the wrong jar at the market!  I did add some salt because of this, but I don’t think it is necessary, my batch was pretty salty.  I plan to use the low salt peanut butter and omit the extra salt next time.  For the sake of my waistline the days of eating giant cookies are over so  I rolled the dough into a 12-14 inch log with a diameter of 1-3/4 inches with each slice about 1/2 – 3/4 inch thick. This made approximately 2 dozen cookies.  Bake for 12-14 minutes.  If you like peanut butter cookies put this one on your need to bake list!

DSC02275

 

Peanut Butter Cookies The Buttery

Ingredients

  • Adapted from the LA Times and Ipso Fatto Blog
  • 1/2 cup 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon baker's sugar
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
  • 1 egg at room temperature
  • 1/2 cup low salt chunky peanut butter at room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cups 6.4 ounces pastry flour or White Lily All purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup dry-roasted peanuts or honey roasted peanuts I used low salt peanuts)

Instructions

  • In the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, cream the butter over medium speed just until creamy. Add the sugars to the butter and cream together, careful not to over-mix. Scrape down the bowl to make sure the sugars and butter are evenly combined.
  • Beat in the egg just until incorporated, then beat in the peanut butter, scraping down the bowl again after mixing.
  • In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.
  • Add the flour mixture to the mixing bowl, beating until smooth and the flour is evenly incorporated. Scrape down the bowl, making sure the ingredients are combined and smooth.
  • Remove the dough from the bowl and form it into a rough log, approximately 2 1/2 inches thick. Place the dough in a sheet of parchment paper and roll the dough in the paper so it is smooth and a consistent 2 1/2-inches thick throughout the log. The log will be about 9 inches long. If the dough is a little soft, chill in fridge for 15-30 minutes.
  • Place the peanuts in a rimmed cookie sheet and gently roll the dough in the peanuts to coat on all sides. The peanuts should stick to the log; if they don't, brush the roll with a beaten egg, then roll it in the peanuts so they stick. Wrap the finished log in parchment paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate until well-chilled, at least 2 hours, up to overnight.
  • Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice the cookies into 1-inch-thick slices and place on parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing them at least 3 inches apart, as the cookies will spread while they bake. Bake the cookies until set and browned around the edges, about 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through baking for even coloring. Cool the cookies, still on the baking sheet, on a rack until set and cool enough to handle.
  • Serve with an ice cold glass of milk!