Soft 'n Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies

I am a creature of habit; everyday I have the same breakfast (sometimes I branch out) and 95% of the time I’ll have the same lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a granola bar and some other snack, then for mid-afternoon snack I will most likely have yogurt. Yes, sometimes I switch things up, but usually I don’t like to and when I bake things I work them around what I typically eat and then that makes me feel uneasy, I don’t know why, but it does.

For the past week I thought I was going to make more snicker doodles because my sister requested them, but then we ended up buying snicker doodles at the store and I had a craving for a good peanut butter cookie. There is pretty much one type of cookie I will never tire of and that is the soft and chew variety. I don’t usually like thin and crisp. I will, on occasion, find a nice thin cookie, but if it’s crisp, I probably won’t eat it.

Many, at least to my knowledge, peanut butter cookies that I’ve had were either dry and crumbly, or they were too crisp for my taste, which is why I went out to search for a soft and chewy peanut butter cookie. I think the recipe I found makes the best peanut butter cookie I’ve had in a very long time. Now I know that the perfect cookie is different to everyone (or maybe I’m thinking chocolate chip cookies, does this still apply to PB cookies?), but these are my version of the perfect peanut butter cookie for the time being. They have a very thin, I don’t want to say crust because that sounds weird, but outer shell? You get just enough crunch when you take that first bite (and second and third) and on the inside is this chewy, dark center. And you know how sometimes you get a PB cookie and you’re like, “there isn’t enough” or on rare occasion, “PB overload!!!”, well these cookies have the perfect amount of peanut butter, I don’t need it needs anymore. And because I got my peanut butter fix for the day (and possibly the next two days), I may not be needing my daily peanut butter and jelly sandwich…or maybe I can nix the granola bar and replace it with cookies!

Soft 'n Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies
from Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy
makes exactly 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients
½ cup creamy peanut butter
1 stick unsalted butter, soft
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt

Directions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the peanut butter, butter, and sugars together until fluffy and lighter in color. Beat in the egg.
3. I'm not sure if this did anything to improve the texture, but I sifted the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium sized bowl and then lightly whisked the contents. You can just whisk them together if you want, I just wanted to try something different.
4. Add the flour mixture half a cup at a time into the peanut butter mixture, scraping down the sides of the bowl when necessary. Try not to over mix. The batter will be very soft and fluffy-like.
5. Using a small cookie scoop, spoon batter two inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheet. Place trays on the middle rack and bake for 8-10 minutes. Cookies will still look puffy and under baked, but take them out anyway, if you leave them in for longer, they will become crunchy. I found that 9 minutes and 30 seconds was the perfect time.
6. Place tray on a cooling rack and let the cookies cool for 5-10 minutes while still on the tray. Remove cookies from the tray and let them finish cooling on another cooling rack. Repeat these steps until all of the batter has been used.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 2 cookies
Calories 118.8 Total Fat 6.5 g Saturated Fat 0.6 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.0 g Monounsaturated Fat 0.1 g Cholesterol 17.7 mg Sodium 104.3 mg Potassium 11.3 mg Total Carbohydrate 13.8 g Dietary Fiber 0.3 g Sugars 8.5 g Protein 2.1 g