A couple weeks ago I was tasked with dessert-duty for a small grill-out at work with some co-workers. I was running a bit low on baking ingredients but I wanted to bake something from scratch and not from a mix. Now, I love peanut butter. I can’t even begin to describe how much I love peanut butter. Case in point, I’m currently having some special time with a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream as we speak (if you haven’t tried any of their Core ice creams yet, you’re seriously missing out). Having this love of peanut butter means having the knowledge of an extremely simple recipe for peanut butter cookies.
Behold… Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies!
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
The ingredients list I have for this recipe is the result of a combination of a couple recipes I found on Food.com and Foodnetwork.com (they can be found here, here and here). The essence of this recipe is the peanut butter, granulated sugar and egg. I doubt the baking soda added much as a leavening agent but the vanilla I added because, well, I love vanilla too.
Ingredients with bonus Grandma Bunny cookie jar in the background. She’s either drunk or going for the Miley Cyrus look.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and grease your cookie sheets.
In a bowl, mix the peanut butter, sugar, egg, baking soda and vanilla together in a bowl. Because I used your regular store-brand peanut butter, I cut the sugar in half, so I only used half a cup. This is because my peanut butter already has sugar added in and I don’t want to lessen the peanut butter taste with so much sugar. Remember, I love peanut butter. If you’re using a sugar-free/natural peanut butter, you may choose to use the whole cup.
At this point, I just wanted to stop and eat the dough.
When all the ingredients are well-combined, begin spooning out the dough. Two of the recipes said teaspoon-sized spoonfuls and the third said tablespoon-sized. I did probably somewhere in between and ended up with around 24 cookies out of this recipe. Roll the dough you’ve spooned out into balls and place them about an inch apart on your cookie sheets. With a fork, use the tines to make the crosshatch pattern on the cookies by lightly pressing in to the dough. I dipped the fork in some extra sugar each time to coat the tines before pressing down.
Om nom nom. Seriously, we don’t need to bake them. They’re still tasty this way.
Bake your cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, until they start getting some puff to them and are a nice golden pale color. Because these cookies are a little lighter, you’ll want to give them at least two minutes to cool before you transfer them off the cookie sheet or they’ll have trouble staying together during the move.
Now I had some downtime while I was waiting for each round of cookies to bake. Since I already had my sugar out I thought I’d grab my honey and take care of my lips.
Shamless Wisconsin plug.
This is a homemade lip scrub I found a while ago online and it has worked well for me when my lips could some exfoliation. All you have to do is mix equal parts sugar to equal parts honey. For this, I used a teaspoon of each, which is honestly more than you’ll need. I don’t know why I chose a shot glass to mix these guys in but it was a small enough vessel to use. Feel free to use whatever you’d like.
Sweet, sweet lip scrub.
Then all you gotta do is slather it on your lips. Due to the size of the sugar granules, this can be a bit of a heavy-duty scrub so be careful. You don’t need to rub this too harshly on your lips, the sugar will do most of the work for you. Best part is the scrub is edible! Though you’ll probably still want to wash your face because, you know, honey sticky goodness.
Once you’ve done a slight scrub and cleaned up, I suggest putting on your favorite lip balm/moisturizer. One of my favorites at the moment is Vaseline’s Lip Therapy. They come in what are basically mini Vaseline tubs and they’re super adorable on top of being super effective.
I’m a much bigger fan of the Cocoa Butter version from this line but that one, after surviving a tumble through the washer and dryer, decided to runaway. Be free, friend.
I’ve also seen a version where coconut oil was used in place of honey along with sugar. If you want something a little milder and less sticky, that could be a good option. Be sure to patch test the coconut oil before use as it can be highly comedogenic for some people.
If you try out either of my recipes seen here, let me know and tell me what you think! If you made any additions, alterations, etc., please sure to let me know as well!
As always, stay well, stay beautiful!
Palettes and Palates 