Test Recipe: Peanut Butter Cookies

I've had a craving for peanut butter cookies lately, so tonight I finally had some free time to throw together a batch. Instead of using my normal recipe, I decided to try the first peanut butter cookie recipe from The New Joy of Cooking (the 14-in-one cookie recipe with peanut butter).

I used (clockwise from top) a Kitchenaid stand mixer, 2/3 cup peanut butter, 1 egg and 2 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 egg yolk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup unsalted butter. Not shown is 2-1/2 cup all purpose flour. The peanut butter I chose to use is Laura Schudder's Smooth Old Fashioned Peanut Butter. This peanut butter doesn't have trans fatty acids because it doesn't contain any partially hydrogenated fats (unlike most other store bought peanut butter). I also use unsalted butter because it's always difficult to determine how much salt is in your salted butter and therefore difficult to replicate a recipe. This is why most baking recipes call for unsalted butter. If you don't have unsalted butter, just use your salted butter, leave out the loose salt, and hope for the best.


So, I mentioned that I used 1 large egg and 1 large egg yolk... so that leaves 1 large egg white unaccounted for. What did I do with it? Instead of throwing it away, decided to freeze it for use later. Put the whites in an ice cube tray and place in freezer. After they have become solid, simply break them out into cubes and place in a labelled ziplock bag. In this case, the large egg white will make two cubes, so I'll label the bag as such. Perhaps when I accumulate enough whites, I'll make an angel food cake.


The butter, sugar, and salt should be blended in the mixer until the butter fluffs up and lightens in color. This is quite an important step as it allows the crystals of the sugar to punch through the butter and leave small air pockets giving you a fluffy cookie and not a dense rock.


Next, I put in the peanut butter. This whole time my Kitchenaid UltraPower Stand Mixer has been on setting 4 out of 10. Can you make this recipe with a hand mixer? Of course, but it will take a bit longer and if the peanut butter is real thick, you'll need to manage the speed and power of your hand mixer properly. Mix until smooth. This was a good time to scrape down the sides once.


I then poured in the egg yolk while the mixer was still going. Once that integrated, I added the egg and vanilla extract and allowed that to mix through.


Now, I reduced the speed of the mixer to its lowest setting and bit by bit added flour to the mixture. You don't want to overwhelm the mixture's ability to integrate the solid, so a little at a time is best. Otherwise, you could have a chunk of unblended flour because you put too much flour in one spot. Also, slowly adding flour reduces the potential for flour get thrown out of the bowl.


Once I scrape the sides down once more time and mixed for thirty more seconds, I got a moist dough which stuck to itself more than the bowl. Note how clean the bowl got - that was the dough pulling all the dough from the sides of the bowl. I shaped it into a ball at the bottom of the bowl for easy handling.


Now, I seperated the dough into two and placed on plastic wrap.


I then placed the two wrapped dough balls into the refrigerator to firm up (at least one hour). Since I made these in the evening, I'll use them the next morning. You can refrigerate for up to two days or freeze for up to a month.


Peanut Butter Cookies
Dough:

1 cup unsalted butter	mix	mix	mix	mix	mix
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2/3 cup peanut butter
1 large egg yolk
1 large egg
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2-1/2 cups all purpose flour