Peanut butter cookies
Sinead Knight provides a peanutty twist on regular chocolate chip cookies using another household staple!
These cookies will be at their best for up to 3 days in an airtight container, or you can freeze the dough to keep for another time. If you mould the dough into discs before freezing you can bake the cookies straight from frozen by adding about 5 minutes to the cooking time – just check they're hot!
N.B Please check for nut allergies before serving these cookies!
Ingredients
(makes 18 regular cookies)
- 115g unsalted butter (softened)
- 115g granulated white sugar
- 100g light demerara sugar
- 115g peanut butter (I prefer crunchy as it gives more texture but smooth is fine too)
- 1 large egg
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 195g plain flour
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to gas mark 5 / 190c and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper
- Beat the butter, both sugars and the peanut butter together in a large mixing bowl until smooth
- Add the egg and vanilla essence, beating until smooth
- Slowly sieve in the flour, baking soda and salt making sure it is all mixed in and the mixture is a bit crumbly looking but still doughy
- Chill the dough for a minimum of 15 minutes – this is really important for sciencey reasons to do with the gluten in the flour relaxing and helping the cookies not to spread out too much when baking in the oven. Ideally the dough should be chilled for 24 hours but who can wait that long?! 15 minutes is fine.
- Take the dough out of the fridge and shape into small balls. Pop the balls onto the greaseproof paper on the tray a few centimetres apart and squish down gently with a fork
- Bake the cookies for about 8-10 minutes, until the edges are crispy. If the middles are a bit soft, they will firm up after a couple of minutes resting. You can then move the cookies to a wire rack to cool with a spatula – don't do this too soon or you'll break the cookie!
