A Cautionary Tale with a Sweet Ending (Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies)
I can’t resist perusing the racks at airport bookstores. Even though I always carry an Ipad, book, or magazine, I still stop and browse. While waiting for my flight to Nashville I flipped through a copy of People Magazine that had an article with Stella Parks of Serious Eats. Her recently published book BraveTart, an homage to iconic American desserts, was already on my radar of course. The article included a recipe for Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies. They looked and sounded delicious. Trying to be as stealthy as possible I took out my phone and quickly snapped a shot of the recipe, mission accomplished I tucked my phone back in my pocket and left to catch my flight.
Nuts and Butterflies
A bake sale to benefit a bird and butterfly sanctuary directly in the path of that ridiculous wall Trump wants to build was the perfect opportunity to make Park’s Honey Roasted PB Cookies. The recipe called for processing honey roasted peanuts for a minute until finely chopped. Uh-oh, I don’t think so, a minute in a food processor does not result in finely chopped nuts more like pulverized nuts. Quick, to my laptop to fire off a tweet to Stella Parks..please clarify. A couple of minutes later..yay, a response- “should be like flour, length of time variable depending on your processor”. First hurdle cleared. Surveying the recipe I noticed some of the ingredients had weights, some didn’t. Auugh! This started my rant to the hubster on the inconsistencies in the recipe.
Me yelling: Why would you put the weight for butter but not the flour? WTH! This is silly! And the finely chopped nuts, that wasn’t right! Wow, and she writes for Serious Eats?! Boy, this book has been getting a lot of press!
Hubster hears: blah, blah, blah, BLAH and nods sympathetically (I’m sure)
I continued to grumble. After making the dough I decided to look for the recipe online, lucky for me the page for her Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies is available on Google.
I ATE HUMBLE PIE
My rant was misplaced. The recipe in the book contained weights for every ingredient and the description for the peanuts was to grind them until they were fine, like flour.
So naturally, I did what anyone would do in this situation..I started to complain about People Magazine and how they messed up the recipe. The moral of the story, do not depend on a celebrity gossip magazine for a recipe. It also gave me an excuse to add BraveTart to my cookbook collection.
I still didn’t grind the peanuts enough which I believe changed the texture of the cookie…I was fixated on the finely chopped verbiage. The cookies did not spread like traditional cookies and ended up looking like little cracked hockey pucks. I’m guessing too much flour (no weights-grrrr) I was looking for a flat, classic-looking cookie, ironically, like the picture in People magazine.
I ended up smushing each cookie like old-fashioned PB cookies. I will definitely try these again but next time I will grind the nuts longer and weigh my flour and use the book, lol. They are YUMMY and besides, I still have half a jar of honey-roasted peanuts left! Below is the recipe from her book, BraveTart. You should get it, it’s that good.
Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies from BraveTart
Ingredients
Dry Stuff (Flour Mixture)
- 1 cup AP flour 4.5 ounces USE Gold Medal flour
- 1-1/4 cups honey roasted peanuts 6 ounces
Next Step: Butters + Leavening Agents
- 1-1/4 cups creamy peanut butter 10 ounces
- 1 stick unsalted butter 4 ounces,soft rt cool (65 degrees use an instant thermometer)
- 1.5 cups granulated sugar 10 ounces
- 3/4 tsp kosher salt or half that amount if using regular table salt
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
Wet Stuff
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 large egg straight from fridge, well beaten
- 3 Tbsp milk 1.5 ounces
Instructions
- Adjust oven rack to middle position. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Sift flour into bowl of a food processor (scoop and sweep method if not using a scale)
- Add peanuts and pulse until fine (approximately 1 minute) almost like flour
- Combine peanut butter, butter, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder and vanilla* in bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. I'm lazy, I add the vanilla to the milk and add it later.
- Mix on low speed to moisten then increase to medium and beat until soft and light ab out 3 minutes
- With mixer running add the egg in 2 additions, mixing untile ach is incorporated
- Reduce speed to low and add peanut flour, followed by milk, mixing to form a very soft dough
- Divide into 34-2 T (1.125 ounce) portions
- Arrange on parchment lined baking sheet, 2 inches apart
- Bake until the edges are firm and just beginning to brown but cookies are still puffy and steamy in the middle about 16 minutes
- Cool on baking sheet until cookie is set about 10 minutes
- Store in airtight container for up to 1 week at room temperature.