Peanut Butter Cookies

If you fancy a hit of something sweet, either for yourself, your guests or to take as a gift over Christmas but have had enough mince pies for now, peanut butter cookies might be the answer.

These are American style cookies from the Hummingbird Bakery (a recipe book you may have noticed I use a lot!) and I love they way they turn themselves into perfectly flat, chewy discs as they bake. I think they look quite impressive packaged as a stack.

They are easy to make and you can either heap a spoonful at a time onto your baking tray or use your hands to roll each one into a ball and flatten on the baking tray. If you really want your cookies to all look the same you can weigh out the dough for each one. Which is a lot easier than it sounds although I will admit I do seem to have become slightly obsessed recently…

This recipe makes 24 large cookies but the dough will keep in the fridge for a day or two if you don’t want to bake it all at once.

Cookie stacks

Recipe

Ingredients

225g butter

200g caster sugar

200g soft light brown sugar

2 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

240g crunchy peanut butter

340g plain flour

2½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

Method

Set the oven to 170ºC. Line your baking trays with parchment paper.

Beat the butter and sugars until pale and creamy.

Add the eggs, one at a time and mix well.

Beat in the vanilla extract and peanut butter.

Add the flour and bicarbonate of soda and mix to a smooth dough.

Heap your dough in equal amounts onto the baking trays, or roll into balls, and make sure to leave a lot of space between each cookie:

Cookie dough, ready to bake

Bake for about 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges and flat.

Allow to cool for a few minutes on the tray before transferring to a cooling rack.

Cooling cookies

Enjoy!

Categories: Baking, Biscuits and Cookies, Gifts, Recipes

Tags: baking, biscuits, cookies, homemade gifts, hummingbird bakery, peanut butter, recipe