peanut butter cookies, anyone?

raya cookies project
recipe #2

wow! is all i can say. the taste of these cookies reminds me of my childhood, back when my mum used to make cookies for hari raya. this particular one reminds me of biskut kacang mazola. i don't know if people still make them, but i can remember it has peanuts and corn oil. these cookies taste similar to that but with a more 'peanut butter-ry' taste in them. *duh...nama pun peanut butter cookies, right?

i know you guys are dying to know how 'easy' it is to make these right? well, lemme just tell you, it IS easy...if you minus the part about shaping the dough into balls and then pressing them with the back of a fork. i *ehem* actually went the extra mile (read: OCD, takde keroje, cari keroje) and weighed each ball. so that they are all uniformly sized. la la la la la laaaa..

aneeways, here is the recipe.

ingredients:

200g (7oz) plain flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
115g (4oz) unsalted butter
100g (3½ oz) caster sugar
100g (3½ oz) unrefined light brown sugar
1 egg
225g (8oz) crunchy peanut butter
pinch of salt

the how to:
1)  sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda together.

2)  in a separate bowl, beat the butter and sugars until soft and creamy.

3)  combine the egg, flour mixture, peanut butter and salt.

4)  add the butter and sugar mixture, and mix until smooth.

5)  wrap the dough in foil or parchment and refrigerate for at least two hours, preferably overnight. *groaaan*

6)  pre-heat the oven to 160°C (325°F/Gas Mark 3).

7)  shape the dough into a 3cm (1¼in) balls and place them 5cm (2in) apart on baking sheets.*

8)  flatten slightly with a fork.

9)  bake for 15 minutes, or until golden.**

10) remove from oven and allow to cool.

*i am about to get all OCD here, so consider yourselves warned, okaaayyy? haha!! at first i used the smallest ice cream scoop i have to scoop out the dough but the end product turned out to be a bit too big to my liking, so i decided to weigh the dough. using the smallest ice cream scoop, with the dough weighing 14g the diameter of the cookies came up to 7cm (2½in). then i weighed each dough to 12g/ball and the diameter reduced to 5cm (2in)...still a bit too big to my liking. so, i reduced the dough to 8g/ball and the diameter came out to 4cm (1½in). okaylah kot? bite size, right? (told ya, OCD...haha!)

** i also had to increase the baking time, you know how it is, right? different oven, different attitude. i increased my baking time to 20 minutes.

happiness is having some cookies with a glass of cold milk. *sigh*

recipe source:  500 cookies by philippa vanstone