Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the basic ingredients for peanut butter cookies? ›

Peanut butter

Peanut butter cookie / Main ingredient

Only 3 Ingredients

Do not use natural peanut butter with the oil on top as the cookies will spread and possibly break apart. Standard creamy peanut butter like Jiff Natural or regular Jiff works best. Some other brands of natural peanut butter without the oil on top, like creamy MaraNatha works good too.

So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.

Conventional creamy peanut butter works best for peanut butter cookie recipes because it has a smooth and even texture. My favorite creamy peanut butter brands are Skippy or Jif. Natural peanut butter, made up of just peanuts and salt, is typically very oily and hard to get even.

Peanut butter cookie dough is stiff and will not spread out while baking (the way chocolate chip cookie dough does). Using the long tines of a fork and pressing down on the dough ball twice , one vertically and one horizontally, flattens the dough evenly and leaves attractive marks. Win-win!

Peanut Butter Cookie Mix Hacks

Flavor Twist: After creating the dough according to the peanut butter cookie mix instructions, portion the dough into balls then roll in a tasty topping like poppy seeds, sesame seeds or sprinkles, or go for a 4:1 ratio of sugar and dry spice, like ground cinnamon or nutmeg.

Why are my peanut butter cookies hard? If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

Refrigerating the dough will give it more structure so the cookies spread less and hold their fork marks through baking. Cooling the dough also ensures that all of the ingredients are the same temperature: they'll bake more evenly and the flavors will meld beautifully. Heat oven to 375°F.

If you're wondering this, and you've baked cookies and frosted them successfully, then you're doing something right and continue to do you. Butter bleed is when the oil and butter...essentially the fats from your cookie... bleed to your icing after it's dry.

Why do you put oil instead of butter in cookies? ›

Due to its liquid nature, using oil in cookies typically results in a denser texture. Also, because oil is 100% fat, it doesn't react with flour the way butter does (butter contains water). Because of that, your cookies won't be as fluffy. If you're a fan of flat cookies, then using oil is an excellent option.

How Sugars Behave in Dough. In recipes that involve baking soda, the primary role of acidic brown sugar is to react with sodium bicarbonate and produce carbon dioxide, making cookies thick, puffy, and soft (cakey at first, then crunchy if they continue to bake).

Peanut Butter Patties®

Crispy vanilla cookies layered with peanut butter and covered with a chocolaty coating.

Mix PB with yogurt, cinnamon, and a hint of honey or maple syrup. Dip in apples slices, celery, or spread on toast with banana slices and coconut. Mix into noodles. Thanks to its salty, nutty flavor and creamy texture, Asian-inspired noodle dishes taste divine with peanut sauce.

According to the FDA, any product labeled peanut butter must be made with at least 90% peanuts, with the other 10% going to "seasoning and stabilizing ingredients" like salt, sugar, and hydrogenated vegetable oils, if desired.

ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDISCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRAIL, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID), SUGAR, PEANUT BUTTER (PEANUTS, FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL [RAPESEED, COTTONSEED AND SOYBEAN OILS]), CANOLA AND/OR SOYBEAN AND/OR PALM OIL WITH TBHQ ADDED TO PRESERVE FRESHNESS, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, GRAHAM FLOUR ...

Group #1: Basic Ingredients

Cookies contain four basic ingredients: fat, eggs, sugar, and flour. Each cookie recipe is simply a variation of these four. Some cookie recipes have different amounts of each of these ingredients. Some incorporate one or more of the ingredients differently into the cookie dough.