The only reason I missed peanut butter in Europe...

I had major sweet cravings today, but, y'know, the classy kind. I didn't want candy, I wanted the good stuff. So I got to work. First I made David Lebovitz's strawberry frozen yogurt, which I won't bother writing out again since you can go to his wonderful blog and get your info from the source. Seriously, it is the best frozen yogurt recipe I have yet encountered since I got my proper ice cream maker earlier this summer (I also have an old hand-cranked one I bought at the fabulous Great Glebe Garage Sale, but it leaks mysterious blue fluid that I fear is some kind of toxic coolant).

Then, I made peanut butter cookies. Generally, I'm not the rabid pb fan that many North Americans are, but I did miss it a bit last year during my 5+ months in Norway... only because it meant that I couldn't make these cookies. The recipe is from the Kids Cooking book from Jean Pare's Company's Coming series. The books are icons of Canadian kitchen lit, and in my opinion, are a much better read than Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle.

Peanut Butter Gems
(makes between 36 and 40 when I make them though the recipe says 24 to 30)

1/2 c margarine (at room temperature)
2/3 c brown sugar, packed
1/3 c white sugar
1 large egg
1/2 c smooth peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt

Mix all the wet ingredients and the sugars (i.e the first 6 ingredients in the list) in a mixing bowl. Add the salt and baking soda and stir them in. Add the flour and stir until it is all mixed in. Take chunks of the dough about a heaping teaspoon in size and roll them into balls. Place the balls at least 3 in/7 cm apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

As an aside, if you are not yet familiar with the virtues of parchment paper, let me be the first to inform you that it is, in fact, the be all and end all of pan-food interface solutions. You will never grease a cookie sheet again, nor will you want to. Cookies slide off parchment paper and you can even line cake pans with it if you are handy.

Okay, back to the matter at hand. Once you've got the little balls on the baking sheet, squish them down with a fork so that they have the classic peanut butter cookie cross-hatching. Then bake them at 350F/177C for about 10 minutes (until they look puffy all the way to the centre, but aren't necessarily browned at all). For second and third batches in the oven, I would recommend decreasing the time to 8 minutes.


My thoughts on this recipe:

Yum.

This is a classic peanut butter cookie. No bells or whistles. It is mild, not overwhelmingly peanutty, and on the medium-high side of sweetness. I guess this is why it's in the kids' cooking book. I'd rather have these cookies than kids any day, haha.