Tuesday 30 March 2010

peanut butter cookies

There's a few cookbook authors I've fallen in love with lately and amongst them all is Donal Skehan of 'Good Mood Food'. Donal has a blog which I very randomly stumbled across one day and after checking on a couple of days, I decided I loved it and therein went on a month long journey to track down his cookbook. Amazon UK said they had it so I put in an order, turns out they didn't which I find out a month later, I emailed them to see where my order was at, they chase it and another email or two later, turns out that a reprint of the books is finally in stock and my order is ready to ship. Yay! The man at Amazon UK was lovely and really, I was just anxious to get a copy of the book so despite the month wait, it was more than worth it.

A lot of the recipes in the cookbook are actually on the website but as a reader of this blog, I'm sure you know me well enough by now to know that I absolutely love my cookbooks. I really wanted to get my hands on this one and flicking through the book when it got here, I actually struggled to bookmark the recipes that I wanted to cook. Every recipe would've been bookmarked! Anyway, thought I'd make a start from the back of the book and give the 'Peanut Butter Cookies' a go. I've substituted crunchy peanut butter with smooth peanut butter.

Just 4 ingredients: 150g dark brown sugar, 60g wholemeal flour, 150g smooth peanut butter and 1 large egg.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Combine sugar and flour in a mixing bowl.

Add the egg and peanut butter. Beat until a thick dough forms. Allow the dough to sit in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Place rounded spoons of the dough onto a greased baking tray. Recipe says it should make 9 cookies, I managed to make 12.

I've flattened mine's slightly with a fork.

Bake for approx. 15 minutes or until the cookies brown slightly. Remove from the baking tray and allow to cool.

Here's the cookbook!

And how did the recipe fair? Well, whilst the outside of the cookie was slightly crunchy, the inner bits were quite doughy. I guess it depends on the type of cookie you're after - this is the type of cookie that you'll bite into quite easily without breaking your teeth but for me I'm quite particular about the proportion of outer crunchiness to inner chewiness (yes, I'm a little bit fussy!) In hindsight, I would've stuck to the recipe and used crunchy peanut butter so that the cookies had that bit of texture.

Without a question though, this was by far the easiest recipe that I've ever made. I didn't think you could even make cookies with just 4 ingredients! And now the big question, what recipe to try next?!

3 comments:

Amy @ cookbookmaniac said...

Oh panda, I love my cookies soft. The best things in life are when a fresh batch of cookies come outta the oven and the first cookie is devoured, with all its warmth and joy. I use to love peanut butter, but I now have a mild allergy to peanuts and I must be careful. Otherwise I get a million acne-like dots on my face. Please enjoy your beautiful cookies for me :)

Rita (mademoiselle délicieuse) said...

Too easy! Nothing like a bit of relaxed baking to fill the house with yummy smells and goodies to dig into afterwards =)

Two fit and fun gals said...

wow only 4 ingreds?!

i still have some pb at home... maybe i can scrape out 150grams worth to make these cookies (and id be using plan flour instead of whole meal do u think that would be ok??)

so simple i could easily whip up a batch before work mmm