By request, peanut butter cookies...

It's amazing how many people email me and ask for my peanut butter cookie recipe shortly after I publish a photo of my full cookie jar, so I thought I'd just share it this way.

This recipe is nothing fancy, but it's tried and true and I've used it forever. It's in my Betty Crocker cookbook which was published in 1969.


PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 375*

Mix thoroughly the shortening, butter or margarine, peanut butter, both sugars and egg. Blend in flour, soda, baking powder and salt. Cover and chill.

Shape dough into one-inch balls. Place 3 inches apart on baking sheet. Flatten in crisscross pattern with a fork dipped in flour.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes.

Makes three dozen cookies.

My notes:

As most recipes written today will tell you to do, I mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and then add the flour mixture to the peanut butter mixture.

I've found that dipping the fork in water works better than dipping it in flour.

People ask me all the time, "How on earth do you get your cookies to all come out the exact same size?" Very simple. Roll the balls of dough the same size.

Don't overbake these cookies. I only bake them for ten minutes, until they're just barely brown on the bottom. And let them rest for a minute or so before you remove them from your cookie sheet to a cooling rack. Of course, you want to cool them completely before you put them in a cookie jar.

And the other question I get, more of a remark really, is why I stack them in my cookie jar that way. I always double this recipe and I can fit all six dozen cookies in my cookie jar if I stack them. And....they don't break when they're stacked.

One other tip for these (and lots of other kinds of) cookies: if they start to dry out, just place a small apple slice in the jar. They'll soften overnight...and the apple actually adds a nice little flavor to this cookie.

A couple of variations:

Instead of using a fork to flatten the cookies, push your thumb into them to make an indentation. After the cookies have baked and cooled, fill with jam.

Or...you can make these a little smaller (3/4-inch balls) and then make sandwich cookies out of them by spreading jam between two cookies.

These are simple but delicious. And my favorite thing to do with them is dip them in my coffee. Yum.