Just a nice quick and easy recipe today: Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies.
Everyone needs a good peanut butter cookie recipe, or two, or ten – right? In getting recipes moved over here from the old blog, I realized that none of my favorite peanut butter cookies have made the trip yet. Okay – one did, actually – Peanut Butter and Jelly Kisses, which are a favorite of Larry’s.
I like the simplicity of these though, along with the fact that they not only keep practically forever, but that they also just keep tasting better as they sit around. I love that in a cookie!
This recipe is from when the girls were little and I needed a recipe that baked up a big batch of cookies in a hurry, for when it was my turn to bring a snack to school. Plus, maybe even keep a few here at home! This was obviously before the days of having to worry about allergies in classmates, so I suppose now you would just have to keep them all at home to enjoy yourself.
The extra chewiness in these comes from the brown sugar and molasses, both of which also add a deeper flavor than just granulated sugar would. They also both work to help retain moisture [which, unlike with people, is good in a chewy cookie!] and keep the cookies from getting stale and dried out.
The other big change here is the use of natural peanut butter. I don’t use anything else anymore, and I find that the natural kind really adds more flavor. I haven’t tried this recipe with regular peanut butter, but I think it will work just fine.
If you have a stand mixer, you can have these in the oven in just a matter of moments, and not much longer than that with a hand mixer.
- 2⅔ cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup soft butter
- 1 cup natural peanut butter
- 1 & ½ cups light brown sugar, firmly packed
- 2 tablespoons molasses
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup roasted, salted peanuts, chopped
- ½ cup raw sugar, for rolling
- Preheat oven to 350º and line heavy baking sheets with parchment paper
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt, set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer [or other mixing bowl if using a hand mixer], Cream together the butter and peanut butter.
- Add the sugar and molasses and beat until combined.
- Add the vanilla and eggs and beat until combined.
- Add the reserved dry ingredients and peanuts and beat until combined.
- Portion dough with a medium [1 & ½ tablespoon size] cookie scoop. Roll dough into round balls, and then roll in course sugar - I like to use raw sugar for this.
- Space the cookies a couple inches apart on the prepared baking sheet and use a fork to press the cookies down and add the criss-cross pattern.
- Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, turning sheets half way through.
- Remove to a cooling rack.
- Store tightly sealed at room temperature.
They may be easy, but they taste like a million bucks!
18 thoughts on “Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies”