Cooking For Engineers

[Dilbert]

>>hersheys cocoa powder. I can not remember how much.

try 1 tablespoon coca per cup of flour.

[Guest]

I'm making this cookies now. They have been really simple so far, and I can't wait to try one.

[Janine]

You might be surprised to find your peanut butter recipe has made it all the way to Uganda in Africa now; I am a missionary here and cooked your cookies from this site and they worked wonderfully. I baked them in a wood-fired outdoor oven made from mud and bricks, at about a medium heat. I had to substitute the sugar (here I have what you would call "raw sugar") and used margarine instead of butter. Despite these variations the cookies worked great so you obviously have a very solid recipe. Thanks for the wonderful directions and logical layout. I also love the graphical arrangement of the instructions for the recipe cards and your excellent photographs. I look forward to trying other foods from this webstie. Well done!

[Guest]

Im in looove these are the best i've ever had and come on people "the size" ??really?? Forget the size i'll eat them even if they look like turds! thank you soooo much my family loves me thanks to you!! YOu have a fan in San Antonio, Texas

[jim-p]

I've been making soft gingernut biscuits (cookies) for years, and I imagine that I would need to use the same practices as those that I follow for making soft peanut butter cookies.
I add flour to the mix gradually until it is soft but does not stick to the fingers when putting lumps of it onto the baking tray. Too much flour and the biscuits turn out dry and hard.
Making balls is too fussy for me - I just put lumps (which would be about 1 inch diameter if I made them into balls) onto the tray, and don't even bother flattening them - they flatten naturally in the oven.
All ovens are not the same! Times and temperatures given in recipes should be used as starting points, and varied to get the desired results. If the oven is too hot, the mixture (for my gingernuts) flows and cooks into a "fried egg" type puddle.
I find that cooking at a low temperature (about 150 deg C, the gingernuts do not brown unless I turn the oven to "Grill" and get some top radiant heating onto them.

Here in New Zealand, our butter comes in 500 gram packs with the wrapper marked in 50 gram divisions. the concept of cups of butter is strange to me.

Regards,

Jim.

[Cookiecrazed]

This is an amazing recipe! Best peanut butter coookies I've ever had! Perfectly soft and chewy . YUM!!!!

[Guest]

Tried this recipe with two small changes. I added in about 40g each of chips and dried cranberries, then reduce the sugars by 20g each to compensate. I measured sugar and flour out on a scale. had some issues with my brown sugar because it was in clumps and wasnt mixing well so that too a while. Anyways, I formed 1.1in balls but ended up with 37 of them. Not sure what happened, maybe my scale is bad, or my ruler. still came out good.

[matthew]

I am new to cooking and baking. My cookies came out a little dry.
When I pushed the dough ball flat with a fork, it broke up into several peaces. I was able to push them back together and it remained one peace, but in general I feel like it was a little dry. After baking, I felt the same way. It was definitely sugary and ~soft, but it was almost too soft with no cohesiveness - the cookie easily fell apart.

Given these properties, what do you think i may have added a little too much of or too little of or done wrong? Anyone got any ideas?

[Michael Chu]

[Athena]

I have been using this peanut butter cookie recipe for years. The only difference is I add a 1/2 tsp vanilla but otherwise its spot on. I have tried it with creamy and crunchy, cashew butter, almond butter.. They're everyone's favorite - from peanut butter lovers to people who don't normally like peanut butter.

I also enjoy making pb&j sandwiches out of them.

Best,

Athena the Systems Ecologist & Biologist.

[Fawnet]

I've had this recipe in my arsenal for about two years now, and everyone thinks the cookies are unusually good. A friend who doesn't notice food much at all, still stopped eating to comment that they were "awesome".

As a side note, I made a batch tonight and forgot to put the eggs in; I couldn't figure out, at first, why the first tray kept breaking so easily. I corrected it and mixed the eggs into the remainder of the dough, but you know, I liked that first trayful and may do it on purpose sometime. They were like a pecan sandy, only with a rich peanut flavor. They broke like crazy, but I think you could get around that just by making the cookies smaller.

[Guest]

This is nearly identical to my Grandfather's recipe. He was the cookie baker in our family and the peanut butter was one of his two favorites. I have his recipe cards--now old, brittle, yellowed and decorated with lots of spills. Thanks to you for revealing the method behind his repeated edits lowering the temperature. We never knew why he edited the recipe in that direction--LOL--we just knew they were good. Gpa was an accountant, but his 2 sons were both engineers. RIP Gpa (1900-1987).B

[Mister_Rob]

This is such a simple, direct recipe and the cookies turned out great! I used chunky peanut butter for an extra layer of crunchy dimension and followed your advice on cooking without refrigerating for a light crispy texture. I like my cookies sweet, so this was perfect!

[mimi]

Skippy? No thanks. Try Laura Scudder's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter. I prefer the "smooth" for cookies. Yes, you need to stir up the Scudder's because the oil separates, but that's what oil DOES under normal circumstances. Just mix the oil in when you first open the jar, then refrigerate the peanut butter and the oil will not separate again. My never-fail recipe from a 1937 cookbook calls for: 1/2 c. shortening, 1/3 c. peanut butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup white sugar, 1 egg, 1 1/2 cups white flour, 1 t. soda, 1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. vanilla. Mix it all together, roll the dough into 1" dia. balls, then flatten with a fork. Bake at 350°F for 10-12 min. The opinions of hundreds of people are, "These are GOOD." (Of course everybody used Crisco for the "shortening" until we learned that Crisco was a no-no; you can use butter. Oil? Not too good. The texture is different. Honestly? Crisco works best.

[CookieLover]

Hi there.

I love your site especially the little charts at the end!
I saw this recipe and wanted to know if there's a way to make a hard and crispy cookie but with a interior chew. I remember having some like this in lemon or peanut butter with a when I was in elementary school that came with our school lunch. They were really large and had a cracked appearance on the top.
All the recipes I've tried are either soft and chewy or hard and crispy.

Thanks in advance!

CookieLover