Peanut Butter Cookies - 100 Days of Real Food

There was another recipe that I wanted to try in this book that included peanut butter. So here is part two of national peanut butter day! I really like cookies and I can eat way too many at a time if I'm not careful. A big debate in our house is which kind of cookie is best, soft or crunchy. I grew up with soft, chewy cookies and one of the best perks of baking your own cookies was getting to eat one warm out of the oven. Hubby grew up having and baking crunchy cookies and at his house, you never ate them until they were completely cool.

The recipe says cake-like cookies for this recipe, but the picture in the book almost made me think they looked crunchy. I was looking forward to trying it and see how they turned out. Also, this recipe uses maple syrup as a sweetener and I am NOT a maple syrup fan. I never have been, as a kid, I put peanut butter and jelly on my pancakes, applesauce on my french toast and fruit on my waffles, never syrup. When I was little we did get the imitation syrup, however, so I had never had the pure maple flavor. I thought that the true maple syrup should probably give a flavor similar to brown sugar to the cookies that I would be used to. I have now tried pure maple syrup and I am still not a big fan, but I do much prefer the pure version instead of imitation. My parents have also switched over to using pure maple syrup for many years.

I followed the recipe as it was written, and it worked well. I was surprised when they came out of the oven at how much my cookies had spread. The picture showed nice compact cookies and mine had gone flat and spread all over the sheet. The dough did seem a bit softer than most cookie recipes as I was putting it together, so I was surprised that I didn't need to chill the dough a bit before baking to help the cookies hold their shape better. I was also unsure what size of cookies to make so I made cookies about my normal size and the recipe ended up making more cookies than I expected. It also took me longer to make this recipe because my cookies needed more time to bake than suggested by the recipe.

These cookies turned out to be soft in the middle with a bit of crunch from the added peanuts and a crisp crust on the outside. They were a good peanut butter cookie and I could not tell that they were only made with whole-wheat flour. The maple syrup was not an overpowering flavor, the fact that peanut butter itself is such a powerful flavor probably helped this out a bit.


Timing: Recipe States: less than 30 minutes, My Actual Timing: it took me 38 minutes
Servings: Recipe States: 20 cookies, Servings For My Family: 32 cookies
Leftovers: The cookies were great for the next several days.


Family Ratings:
Me: I was very pleasantly surprised at how soft the cookies were with all whole-wheat flour and the good flavor even with the maple syrup.
Hubby: Hubby hasn't gotten to try them yet, late work meetings. I will update when he tries one.
Big Man: He thought these were great and asked for more.
Bear: This picky son refused to try them because he didn't want cookies with nuts in them. We make him try most things, but if he doesn't want dessert we do let him skip that.
Mr. T: He was so excited to try these he could hardly wait until they were done. He has even been caught sneaking an extra one when no one was looking. What to do with those three-year-olds.

Will I repeat: I would make this recipe again, although there are a few things I would change.

What will I change: I would probably leave the peanuts out. I think then Bear would eat and enjoy them too. Also, I would let the dough chill a little bit before baking so that hopefully they would not spread out quite as much.

Please let me know where you fall on the cookie debate in the comments, soft or crunchy cookies? Do you eat them fresh out of the oven or let them cool first?