Peanut Butter Cookies

The series of American foods continues today with peanut butter cookies. Yesterday it was sweet potatoes and earlier today a smoked salmon bagel, so now it is the turn of something sweet. This also opens a short run of baking, which will probably last until Christmas Eve or the day before.

Peanut butter and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are as much a part of being American as rye bread and crispbread are of being Finnish. The sandwich is two slices of white bread with peanut butter and jam spread between them, most often grape jelly. When I lived in Boston the supermarket had several metres of shelf given over to peanut butter, and you could have it smooth or crunchy, in a small jar or a family-sized one. The best-known brand must be Jif, which I am told outsells all the others there.

Peanut butter is good for baking too, and satay sauce cannot be made without it. Many people like it as it is, licked straight off a finger, say, or scooped up with a stick of celery. A pleasantly versatile ingredient, then, and easy to find in Finland as well. Even small shops usually have a jar of something made in Germany, and to my great surprise my local K-Supermarket had Finnish organic peanut butter!

But to the matter in hand, which this time is a decadently fatty and sugary recipe. You can tell from the measures that it is American. Half a cup is 120 ml, and that is the amount of butter, of each of the two sugars and of peanut butter. I have put the grams alongside as well, because butter and peanut butter are awkward to measure by volume.

Apart from the egg, no liquid goes into the dough. Once the flour has been mixed in it feels really dry and stiff, and intuition tells you to add some liquid. The temptation is worth resisting, because cookies made from a looser dough collapse in the hot oven. Chocolate chips can go in if you feel like it. The cookie in the picture has none.

The dough is rolled by hand into balls two or three centimetres across, which are turned in sugar, set on the baking tray and pressed flat with a fork from two directions. That leaves a small criss-cross pattern on top. I read somewhere that the pattern has belonged to American peanut butter cookies since the 1930s, and that it is how you tell a peanut butter cookie from the others. The fork is useful too, since a ball of dough as dense as this would apparently not bake evenly otherwise. On the cookie in the picture the fork marks show only faintly, but the sugar crystals stand out well.

The baking time is short, 9-11 minutes. The cookies are still quite soft when they come out of the oven, so prodding them with a finger tells you nothing. It is best to trust the clock and take the tray out when the edges are just beginning to brown. They harden only as they cool. The recipe makes 24 cookies, so the rolling and pressing are repeated 23 times.

Recipe card

Peanut Butter Cookies

Print

• makes 24
• Oven 175 °C
• Baking 9-11 min

You will need

120 ml (110 g)	unsalted butter, at room temperature
120 ml (215 g)	soft brown sugar
120 ml (100 g)	sugar
1	egg
1 tsp	vanilla extract
120 ml (125 g)	peanut butter
300 ml	flour
1/2 tsp	bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp	salt
50-100 ml	chocolate chips, if you feel like it
	sugar for rolling the balls in

Method

1. Set the oven to heat to 175 °C.
2. Beat the butter and the sugars for two or three minutes, until the mixture is fluffy. Add the egg and the vanilla extract and mix. Add the peanut butter and mix. Take care not to overbeat.
3. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt together and stir them into the peanut butter mixture. Add the chocolate chips, if you are using them. At this stage the dough feels really dry and stiff, and intuition tells you to add liquid. Resist the temptation, though, and the cookies will not collapse in the hot oven.
4. Pour some sugar onto a plate. Roll the dough by hand into balls two or three centimetres across, turn them in the sugar and set them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Press each ball flat with a fork from two directions, which leaves a small criss-cross pattern on top. Repeat 23 times.
5. Bake for 9-11 minutes, until the edges are just beginning to brown. While hot the cookies are quite soft, so here it is best to trust the clock alone. Once cooled, the cookies are hard.

A brief warming in the microwave softens the cooled cookies nicely.

A brief warming in the microwave softens the cookies nicely, but they are tasty cold as well.