Baking Friday - Cookie # 9

It's a Peanut Butter Cookie Throw Down!

Neither of our cookies is the "traditional" peanut butter cookie that we all had when we were kids.  Not a thing wrong with that cookie - unless, of course, you over bake them.  But otherwise, it is a classic for good reasons.

Nay, Deb wasn't going to do the classic peanut butter cookie.  She wanted to see what else was out there in the world of peanut butter cookies.  And she found these two!

One of our cookies defies the definition of cookie.  Only four ingredients - peanut butter, sugar, egg and vanilla.  No flour.  No leavening.  No fuss, but a cookie?  The other cookie is a bit closer to our traditional peanut butter cookie - at least it has the more classic ingredients, including good, ol' flour and leavening.

Can you guess which one is which?

I didn't tell my taste testers either until folks had guessed a bit.

Which one is our four ingredient cookie?  Is it this one?

Or is it this one?

A couple of my taste testers guessed the bottom one.  But two of my young taste testers are quite the cookie connoisseurs and knew immediately that it was the one on the top!

Here is that recipe...and for those who watch such things, is this gluten free?

1 cup of peanut butter
1 cup of sugar
1 egg
Splash of vanilla (I added a splash of almond and a dash of salt, too)

Mix them together.  (They will look a lot like wet sand.)

Shape them into balls.

Flatten with the tines of a fork (like the classic peanut butter cookie we've all known!)

Bake 15 minutes @ 325, and you have cookies!  IMPOSSIBLE, right???   This doesn't make sense!

How should this work?  It shouldn't!  But it does!  And the taste of peanut butter really pops on these - in an almost candy-like way.  If you don't have flour, but you want peanut butter cookies, you can!  If you don't have butter and shortening and leavening on hand, but you want peanut butter cookies, you can!  How crazy is this?!

The other cookie recipe looks more like a cookie recipe, for cryin' out loud!  This one should have been the clear winner in our throw down, but alas, twas not to be!  It was just ok.  Soft, but just ok.  I found that they did improve some after a couple of days, so if you want to bake ahead, let them sit on the counter for a couple of days and then sandwich them with some sort of icing or filling.  As you can tell, I was disappointed a bit, but this link will show you the ingredients to get me to this batch of dough.

Same general plan as our first...roll into balls...but no fork tines this time around.

And bake for 15 minutes @ 325 degrees again until just golden but not over done.

I baked both cookies on parchment paper and let them hang out on the cookie sheet for about 2 min. before sliding the parchment onto the counter to finish cooling.

G and I did a tasting the night before - right as they came out of the oven.  And I was pretty sure at that point which cookie would win the next morning.  But I also felt like a bit of peanut butter icing and some chocolate drizzle would help, especially the softer peanut butter chews one.

So that is what I did.  I filled a pastry bag full of peanut butter icing and let folks add at will.

OR...as one of my fine taste testers did towards the end of the day....took that nearly full pastry bag of icing and squirted the whole thing straight into his mouth!  (Can we say it had been a long week at work last week?  Sort of like a Happy Hour that was workplace compliant?  Maybe?)

Would I do either recipe again?  Yep, I would do the 4 ingredient one, especially with little kids.  It comes together super fast and with very little mess, and they can form them into balls by hand - or have a fully edible play dough to shape anyway they want if there are no raw egg health concerns.  And in under 45 minutes, they have cookies that they made themselves!

And while the other recipe came from King Arthur Flour's website, what can I say?  Nobody's perfect in this world, right?

Thanks for stopping by!  Can you believe we've finished off 9 months of these Baking Fridays?  We are coming down the home stretch with our full holiday season...Halloween, Thanksgiving and the bestest baking holiday of all - Christmas!  Hope you come back this Friday for our Baking Friday - Cake # 10.  I'm actually doing cupcakes!!  I feel 15 years younger just thinking about cupcakes!