Friday Food Craft: Peanut Butter Cookies

Another Friday, another food craft. This week we are going back to the sweet side of things with a recipe for peanut butter cookies. I kind of mashed together a couple different recipes I had to come up with this batch, which is probably the best one I've ever made. They were a great way to brighten up a rainy day. I recommend them warm with a glass of milk :) Try them yourself and let me know what you think!



You will need:

1/2 cups butter, softened*
1/4 cup margarine, softened*
3/4 cups Brown Sugar, packed
1/2 cups Sugar
2 whole Eggs (room temperature)
1 cup Peanut Butter Creamy Or Crunchy ( like to use natural peanut butter as it has a very intense peanut flavor)
1.5 tsp vanilla flavoring
2 cups Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt

*you will need an additional 1/4 cup of granulated sugar for rolling your cookies in prior to baking.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to cream the butter and margarine (I use both butter and margarine because I have found that butter gives a better taste, but margarine typically allows your cookies to become fluffier and not fall flat). Add the brown sugar and sugar and cream together. Beat in the peanut butter, then add the eggs one at a time, mixing until combined. Mix in the vanilla extract.

In a small mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and mix well.

Pour 1/4 cup sugar in a small bowl. Take a heaping tablespoon of dough and form into a ball. Coat the ball in sugar by rolling it around in the bowl. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.

Press the tines of a fork into the balls to create the criss-cross pattern on the top and to flatten the dough a bit. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until cookies are set and lightly brown around the bottom edges.

As you can see from the pictures, I also opted to add some chocolate chips to half of my cookies (the husband requested his be plain peanut butter--but I like a little something extra).

*I use both butter and margarine in this recipe as I find I enjoy the taste of butter in the cookies, but the cookies tend to rise and be a little fluffier with margarine.