perfect peanut butter cookies

peanut butter cookies

I inherited the book ‘The Joy of Cooking’ by Irma Rombauer from my mother who in turn had inherited from her mother.  The book was first published in the USA in 1931 and  my copy is the 1952 edition.

my copy of the joy of cooking

I have never made anything from it, but have read bits and pieces and use it more as a reference. I am however rather emotionaly attached to it. It makes me feel like I have a little piece of my mom on my bookshelf.

I stumbled across this recipe on Jun Belen’s fabulous blog and discovered its origin is off the ‘Joy kitchen blog’, which is the online home of the Joy of cooking.  I was immediately intrigued and thrilled to discover.

I have also fairly recently fallen in deep like with peanut butter and developed a really nice peanut butter shortbread recipe a while ago. Peanut butter and biscuits are a perfect marriage.

I looked the recipe up in my copy and found it had been ‘starred’ by my mom, which created added excitement.

I wrote the recipe down and left off the 1/2 a cup of brown sugar erroneously so mine were not too sweet, but they baked up perfectly though.

This is what you need to make:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/3 cup butter (75gms)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup peanut butter (crunchy or smooth) 265gms
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

how to make:

• pre heat the oven to 180 C (375 F)
• beat the butter and sugar together until creamy
• add the egg and beat some more
• add the peanut butter and vanilla extract and beat
• sift the flour, baking powder and salt and add to the batter
• mix briefly until the dough comes together
• roll the dough into small balls about 1 inch (3 cm’s), place on a lined baking sheet and press down with a fork (in one direction as I did, or in two directions to get a criss cross effect)
• bake for about 10 to 15 minutes until a light golden brown
• remove and allow to cool on a cooling rack

Jun sandwiched his together with home made dulce deleche which would be totally awesome.  have a look at his recipe here.

These really are just perfect peanut butter cookies and terribly easy to make.  Lori you will love! Next time I may add some extra chopped up roasted peanuts to give a bit more crunch.

Based on this success, I’m keen to check out and try out more recipes from ‘The Joy of Cooking’.

soft and crumbly

light and golden and rather delicious