It just doesn’t get easier (or yummier) than peanut butter cookies. I’ve tried a lot of recipes, with mixed results. My absolute favorite recipe is, of course, the one that is the least healthy. Sigh.

Even though I post a lot of sinfully-bad-for-you recipes on my blog, in my “real” life, (as opposed to my make-believe alter ego blog life) I try to make good food decisions to offset my  frequent occasional indulgences. I believe strongly in buying organic whenever possible, and I grow a lot of my own fruits, vegetables, and grains. But frankly, a green salad topped with slices of chicken breast is probably not going to get a lot of Pinterest hits! And we all love baking porn, right?

I love to use fresh ingredients like milk, cream, and butter, and I try to stay away from shortening, knowing it is really, really not good for you. But…there are a few things that just demand the use of Crisco: pie crusts, biscuits, and…peanut butter cookies.

Shortening makes these cookies very light and crispy. Nothing is worse to me than a heavy, chewy peanut butter cookie. I’d rather make these twice a year and have them melt in my mouth than compromise. (Yes, I know how weird that sounds, thinking of butter as a “compromise”!) Here’s the recipe for you – see if you don’t agree!

 

Trade a nice cup of green tea for your double white chocolate mocha, and have a couple of cookies with it. See? It’s all about tradeoffs.

Pick a side here, folks. When it comes to chocolate chip cookies, it seems we have the “thick and crunchy” faction and the poor misguided souls who vote for “soft and chewy.” I guess you can tell which side of the fence I’m on!

I experimented with five batches, using three different brands of chocolate chips. The recipes on the packages were nearly identical, with just minor changes (probably so they don’t waste their profits suing each other over recipe rights) like a little less salt or a little more vanilla, but essentially the same.

My first batch was made by following the Hershey recipe exactly, and the cookies came out the way I like them – which is thick, soft inside, and a little crusty outside. This was a total surprise, because every time I’ve actually followed the recipe on the package I’ve gotten cookies that are flat, flat, flat.

A few of them, however, had sunken centers, and some resembled cow pies (sort of a dark, rippled meltdown on the edges), but they still couldn’t be considered flat.

Out of curiosity, I chilled some of the dough from the first batch for an hour and tried again. What a difference! There was very little spreading, and no sunken centers.

For batch number two I used half shortening, half butter, with an extra 1/2 cup of flour, an additional teaspoon of vanilla, and a teaspoon of baking powder. These tasted the same, but looked nicer than the first batch. No cow pies, no sinking. There is the “ick” factor of using shortening, but I sometimes ignore that for the sake of the final product.

Batch number three was intended for those of you who prefer flat and chewy. I used softened butter, but otherwise followed the basic recipe. It was a little flatter, but not much. What the… Do you mean I can’t even make flat cookies on purpose? I’m beginning to think it’s because of my fresh eggs. Could it be that my girls lay such superior eggs that the dough refuses succumb? We’ll see about that.

With the fourth batch I used very, very soft butter – almost to the melting point – and added 2 tablespoons of milk. Ta DA: flat and chewy.

If you’re wondering why the chips don’t stand out of the cookie, it’s because I ran out of regular chocolate chips and had to use the mini chips. But trust me, they’re flat. There, I hope you’re happy!

For my final batch I used my favorite recipe…one I’ve tweaked and adjusted for years. It’s never failed me, and produced cookies that are nice and moist but with a little crunch – the best of both worlds. Yes, it uses shortening, but you can make it using only butter as long as you use a good quality butter and keep it COLD!

Here is what I’ve learned from all this:

• If you want flat and chewy cookies, follow the recipe on the package, but use very soft butter and half the baking soda. If your first pan of cookies isn’t flat enough (make sure to give them a little time…they tend to deflate while cooling), add a little milk to the remaining dough and try again.
• If you want puffy cookies, make sure to use cold butter, cut into small chunks to make mixing easier. Use a cookie scoop and cold dough. I used frozen nuts, too. If you’re using the recipe on the package, add a few tablespoons of flour. Don’t grease the cookie sheet!

• USE A SCOOP! If you just spoon the dough onto the cookie sheet, the edges will be brown. Here’s a picture to illustrate. This was the same dough, baked at the same time. The cookies on the left were dropped from a spoon. The cookies on the right were scooped.
  

  The cookies on the left were “dropped”. The cookies on the right were “scooped”. Scoop wins!

• This is just my opinion, but I think the recipe on the package calls for too many chocolate chips! I love chocolate, but I want to taste the cookie, too.

Here is my Grade-ANumberOneAllTimeBestestMostBeloved Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe:

So…what to do with all of these cookies? I rarely make a single batch of anything, because I love the feeling of having a freezer full of options – especially when unexpected company comes. Living here in the country I’ve had to adjust to the fact that people just “drop by”! When the cookies are scooped onto a pan, frozen, then placed in freezer zipper bags and hidden in your freezer, they’re easy to grab and plop on a cookie sheet. I can turn the oven on when I see a car come through our gate, and have warm cookies ready to serve in 20 minutes flat.

Right about now, chocolate chip cookies don’t sound very tasty. to me. It’s hard to imagine that we will ever be friends again! But when the snow’s falling, cabin fever is setting in,  and I need an emotional boost, those bags of dough will be looking mighty good.

Frozen cookie dough makes great gifts, too. I used to make six different types of dough for my father every Christmas. He loved this, because he could bake just a few at a time when he got an urge for sweets. Cookie dough is also perfect for housewarming or hostess gifts…much more personal than a bottle of wine.

Ooooh, did I say wine? I think I should be rewarded for all of this effort, don’t you?

“Do as I say, not as I do” never applied more perfectly than at this moment. I’ve been making shortbread cookies for decades, yet still managed to totally screw up the directions today. I was busy baking something else and thought it would be wise to multitask by measuring out the shortbread ingredients at the same time. Hah!

I knew that the butter and sugar were supposed to be mixed first and then everything else  added, but I was moving like a whirling dervish and went right ahead and dumped all of the dry ingredients together into one bowl. That meant the butter and sugar weren’t mixed until fluffy, and it was hard to get the dough to come together, so I had to add a couple of teaspoons of milk to coax it into cooperation. But (you know what’s coming here, right?) it still turned out fine!

Here is a recipe for basic shortbread, which has a sweet buttery flavor and a delicate texture that melts in your mouth. Perfection. But because I can’t help tinkering with perfection, I was compelled to dip the cookies in dark chocolate and sprinkle some of them with nuts. They look very elegant, and taste like sin.  (And yes, I’m leaving the two teaspoons of milk in the recipe because it made it easier to handle and didn’t affect the texture.)

SHORTBREAD COOKIES

2 cups powdered sugar
2 cups butter, softened
2 teaspoons milk or half & half
2 egg yolks
4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup cornstarch

• Heat the oven to 350 F.
• In a large bowl, combine powdered sugar and butter.  Beat until light and fluffy.
• Add egg yolks and milk, and blend well. (If using a stand mixer, you may want to switch to the dough hook at this point.)
• Add the flour, cornstarch and salt. Stir just until the mixture forms a smooth dough.
• Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut with a cookie cutter.  Alternately, you can also roll the dough into small balls and press with a cookie stamp, or put the dough through a cookie press. These will not spread on the cookie sheet, so you can put them close together.
  

  Using a cookie stamp with an apple design.

• Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 9-12 minutes, just until golden brown around the bottom edges.  Cool on the pan for a few minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.

It’s almost impossible to guess how many cookies this recipe will make; it depends on the size of your cookie cutters and how thinly you roll them. I can confidently say that it makes a buttload ton of cookies! At least 48 good sized ones – probably more.

If you want to jazz them up a bit, you can sprinkle them with coarse sugar before baking, or wait until they’re baked and cooled, then dip each one in melted chocolate, lightly scraping the bottom of the cookie against the bowl to remove excess chocolate. Place them on a waxed paper covered baking sheet to harden. I always pop mine in the freezer for just a few minutes, which speeds things up and helps keep the chocolate from “blooming” (getting little light colored spots on it.)

If chocolate covered shortbread isn’t enough to make you deliriously happy, here is one more variation. Because of my love affair with maple, I had to try making a maple flavored shortbread, and am tickled with the results.

To make these, use the shortbread cookie recipe above, except substitute 2 teaspoons of Mapleine (maple flavoring) for the 2 teaspoons of milk. When the cookies are baked and cooled, cover them thinly with icing and drizzle them with a brown maple accent. Here’s the icing recipe:

ICING FOR MAPLE COOKIES

3 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon powdered egg whites (“Just Whites” or Wilton’s “Meringue Powder” work well)
1/2 teaspoon “Mapleine”
small pinch of salt

• In a medium bowl, beat together the powdered sugar, water, and powdered egg whites with a mixer for 2-3 minutes. Remove 2 rounded tablespoons of icing to a small bowl, add 1/2 teaspoon of Mapleine, and set aside.
• Add water, 1/2 teaspoon at a time, to the white icing in the medium bowl until it’s thin enough to spread onto the cookies easily. You may use a knife, but I prefer a pastry brush.
  

  “Painting” the cookies with icing.

  Because of the powdered egg whites, this icing will become very firm, so only use enough to cover the cookie with a thin layer.

  • Put the maple icing from the small bowl into a zipper bag and cut a tiny bit off of one of the corners. Drizzle or pipe a design on the cookies, and allow them to harden completely before storing in an airtight cannister. These can also be frozen.
    

    Piping maple accents on iced shortbread.

  I think my culinary trip to Scotland is over for now. Be glad this is a baking blog, not a cooking blog, or I’d probably feel honor bound to give you a recipe for Haggis!

  Guid cheerio the nou!