Peanut Butter Cookies

These for me are a comfort food. It is a recipe I remember making in my own home in early high school, either to take in for fundraising bake sales, or for friends or family. It is a really tolerant recipe in terms of amounts, and its nice to make something that isn't chocolate-based.

Equipment:

• Knife
• Chopping board
• Large mixing bowl
• Medium mixing bowl
• Cup measures
• Fork
• Cup
• Electric mixer
• Sieve (to sift your flour)
• Tea towel or glad wrap
• Cookie tray/sheet
• Baking paper

Ingredients:

• 125g butter (half a block)
• 1/2 cup sugar (white or raw)
• 1/2 cup soft brown sugar
• 1/2 cup smooth or crunchy peanut butter (I like crunchy)
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cup Self-Raising Flour
• Pinch Salt (optional - remember how salty some peanut butters already are)
• Baking paper

Method:

1. Chop up your butter into small cubes (about 1-2cm cubes)
2. Put chopped up butter, both kinds of sugar, and peanut butter in your large bowl, and mix until it has a creamy texture with the electric mixer (it will take a little while for the butter lumps to totally disappear)
3. Break the egg into the cup, and beat with a fork.
4. Add your egg into the mixture, and mix again with the electric mixer.
5. Sift your flour and the salt into the medium mixing bowl (this is optional, but it does make sure you don't have any lumpy floury bits lumpy floury bits).
6. Add this to your creamy mixture and mix well with the beater until you get a soft dough
7. Cover your mix with a tea towel or glad wrap and stick it in the fridge.

Now you need to leave your dough in the fridge for half an hour or more (whatever is convenient). You can also roll this out into a long sausage, wrap it in glad wrap and then foil and freeze if you want to keep emergency cookie dough in the freezer, but you will need to let it fully defrost before you continue with the next step.

1. Preheat your oven to 200 Celsius.
2. Cover your baking sheet with baking paper.
3. Using clean hands, grab about a tablespoon of mixture, and roll it into a ball between your palms, as if you were making clay, play-doh or plasticine objects :).Put it on the baking tray and press it down with a fork (I like a cross-hatch)
4. Fill up your tray with these little biscuits. Leave a couple of cm between each on the tray, as these guys to spread and expand - I tend to do about twelve per tray. You can do three trays at once or the same tray three times (which is what I do).
5. Put your tray in the oven and set the timer for 8-9 minutes for light-coloured chewy biscuits, or 10-11 minutes for crunchier ones.
6. Cool it for five minutes on the tray, before transferring it to a wire cooling rack. I usually lose my first tray of biscuits at this stage to whoever is in the house, which is why I cook them in stages :)

Storage

These keep in an airtight container for about a week to ten days. But I've never had them last that long. They do get chewier the longer they are kept.