Crunchy Peanut Butter Cookies

Now that I finally have a bag of all-purpose flour, I have been trying my hand at baking. So far, there have been various degrees of success! With my ”winging it” technique of cooking that has turned out well for me in the last few years, I realised through a few baking failures that there is actually a science to baking. You need to follow the recipe. For me, this was a bit of a sad wakeup call but I realised that if I follow the recipes I actually get some great tasting food from baking!

This recipe for me was the wakeup call to following a recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/peanut-butter-cookies

The recipe has 4 ingredients and is straightforward to make. Perfect for a newbie, like me, who scares easily for baking recipes.

Ingredients:

200g Crunchy peanut butter (you can use smooth, but the crunchy does give the cookie a nice texture)
175g Caster sugar (the recipe says golden, but I just used the white caster sugar I have)
A small grind or shake of salt (recipe says 1/4 teaspoon)
1 Egg (I used a medium-sized free-range egg)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius on the fan setting
On a kitchen scale, in a mixing bowl measure out the peanut butter, sugar and the dash of salt adding the ingredients together and mixing them together well
The batter will seem quite dry, but that is okay just mix it
Crack the egg into the mixing bowl
Mix everything together until it is well mixed and forms a sticky dough
The batter needs 2 oven proof baking trays for you to lay the cookie batter out on, so throw a sheet of baking paper on the baking trays
The recipe calls for scooping a cherry tomato sized ball of dough from the batter and laying it out on the tray, and using a fork to flatten and neaten it into a cookie shape
I found leaving about a 2 finger gap between the cookie dough balls worked well
Pop the cookies in the oven for about 12 minutes when the oven is ready
My best advice is to keep a close eye on the cookies from about 7 minutes into the cooking, they can burn easily
When the cookies are ready to come out of the oven, they will be slightly brown on the edges and pale in the centre
Cool them on a cooling tray for about 30 minutes