The Best Sourdough Recipes | Sourdough Starter | Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

The holiday season is the time for baking. A tin of cookies can be the perfect, low-cost gift for someone at the office or church. So, since my mind has turned to cookie dough (not literally, but it is early in the Christmas season, so give it time!), I thought I’d share my peanut butter cookies and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies recipes.

First up, the mother of all cookbooks, in my humble opinion, the Fannie Farmer cookbook has a great, classic peanut butter cookie recipe.

It is simple and although I prefer crunchy peanut butter for sandwiches, I like to use creamy peanut butter for baking. It’s the mouth feel of the cookie. The chunks just ruin it. Below is my variant of the classic. I tend to go half butter, half Crisco with cookie recipes; both for budgetary reasons and I think they bake up nicer — a little lighter with less butter.

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup peanut butter, smooth
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 beaten egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup flour

Cream the wet ingredients and then add the dry. The dough will be dry and crumbly — that is ok. When you go to bake them, roll the dough into a ball and then flatten the cookies using the tines of a fork to give them the distinctive peanut butter cookie look.

For the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies variant, you barely have to change the recipe above. For a crumbly cookie recipe like this one, when you add another ingredient – especially a heavy one like chocolate chips, add more flour. Add an extra quarter cup of flour to the above recipe before you add the cup of chocolate chips. That is it. Of course, you won’t be able to do the cool pattern with these cookies. A small price to pay for such decadence!

This is such an easy recipe and a great one for experimenting. Try butterscotch or peanut butter chips instead of chocolate chips. One of our family favorites is a handful of butterscotch chips tossed in with the chocolate chips. You get just a hint of the butterscotch, which in some recipes can be overpowering. But just the handful, added to the chocolate chips, is a perfect accent.

These cookies store really well, making them a nice holiday cookie to bake and gift. They do not travel well, so don’t mail them to anyone, but local people will welcome these cookies with open arms and mouths.

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