Peanut Butter Cookies

Hi Friends, Hope you all are doing good there. Before I go I thought of sharing this wonderful recipe with you all. You should be thinking all of a sudden, where am I off to...Yeah, I just forgot to mention that in my previous post ;only after posting it struck my mind. We are shifting to a new place by the end of this month and so I got soooooooo much of packing to do (while my son unpacks......grrrr). Since my little one keeps me busy full time, I just couldn't do much packing. I try packing things, he just pulls the stuffs out of the box and drag them away and then try to sit inside the box!!!.I don't know what he is up to, but I then thought I will stay up late tonight and do some packing...... At present we are in the southern tip of UK which is comparatively warmer and sunnier than anywhere in the UK. And now we are moving to the north, 7 hours drive from here...We will be moving again after two months from there to another place. We should be there for few years. Its so cold there in the North, I am just not very happy going there thinking of the chilling weather up north and have been moaning since the time my husband got his new job there. Probably once I settle down there, I will be fine.....Don't think I am trying to be a bit British here. Anyone who live in the UK, will just wish for some streak of sunlight after the long nasty winter which is always cloudy and raining and sometimes snowing. If it is up north always snowing in winter. God!!! I remember, when I was in UAE, where most of the year is warm, sorry, smoking HOT, how crazy everyone including me used to go crazy when it rains. I used to wave my hands outside the window to get hold of few drops of rain in my hand. It just rains once or twice in a year and may be not even that. It is such a bright country and always sunny. It is really really hot during the summer in UAE....It always hits 50 degrees Celsius during July-August!!! But the winter is really cool. When I used to be in UAE, I felt the winter was terribly cold. I used to wear 2 sweaters and sit under the blanket and still shivering. After coming here, I really came to know what real winter is....

Anyways all I wanted to say is that, I don't really know how long it will take to get the Internet connection in the new place, so I might not be able to blog for sometime. Sometimes, we might get the connection in a weeks time, may be less or more. This will be my last post before leaving, But I surely will be checking on my blogger buddies' updates and new posts until I leave.

About the Peanut butter cookies, I came across these wonderfully crunchy and crumbly cookies from Divya’s blog. The look of the cookies itself was was so inviting and tempting. So I baked it a couple of days back and it was really good. I love peanuts and I love peanut butter, so for me these cookies were a slice of heaven. So if you are someone like me who loves peanuts, you will love these cookies. As usual, I have the habit of playing with the dough through out baking. I keep adding different ingredients to see how it tastes. I wanted to add some chopped peanuts, but dint have any but used few other ingredients to seee how well it pairs with the peanut cookies. With these amount of ingredients and if you are using a teaspoonful of dough you should get 3 dozen cookies! Isn't that a huge amount? I made it in three batches. The 1 st batch, I just made plain cookies, without making any changes. The second batch, I rolled the cookie balls in a mixture of cinnamon powder and sugar, then pressed it and baked it. It tasted heavenly. And the third batch, After the cookie was baked and cooled, I melted some bitter sweet chocolate and drizzled on top......For me the winner is the Chocolate drizzled peanut butter cookies. You can see all the three types I made in the picture provided. The chocolate and the peanut butter cookies works so well. If you want to be bit more 'Chefy', you can place Hershey's kisses in the centre of cookie. It tastes sooooooooooooo good. Talking about this fabulous cookie, it's the recipe of Betty Crocker and I followed the ingredients as such.


Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
1/2 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup Brown Sugar (I used demerara sugar)
1/2 cup Peanut butter
1/4 cup Shortening (I used vegetable oil)
1/4 cup Butter (room temperature)
1 Ex-large Egg
1 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour/Maida
3/4 teaspoon Baking soda
1/2 teaspoon Baking powder
1/4 teaspoon Salt

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, combine together the granulated sugar, brown sugar, peanut butter, butter, shortening, egg and mix well. In another bowl, whisk well the flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder. Slowly add the flour mixture to the first prepared mixture and knead slowly to form a soft dough.
2. Place the dough in the refrigerator for two hours or until firm. Line 2 cookie sheets with baking paper. Then take a heaped teaspoonful of the dough, form into ball shape by rolling it in your palm, Place it in the cookie sheet then press in crisscross pattern to flatten them using a fork dipped into sugar. make sure you leave at least 2" between each cookie because they really expand while baking.
3. Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius. Place the cookies in the middle rack and bake for about 13-14 minutes until it turns golden. (The original recipe asks to make a 1 1/4 inch ball and bake at 375 degree Fahrenheit (190 degrees Fahrenheit) for about 9-10 minutes. I thought 375 was 180 degrees, only realised it wasn't after my cookies took longer time than mentioned in the recipe. But don't worry, they turned out perfect. I normally do almost all baking at this temperature, cos that's the safest temperature for many cakes and cookies.)
4. Cool for 5 minutes; remove from cookie sheet and Cool on wire rack. This cooling on wire rack is essential, because this allows the steam to escape, which otherwise will get absorbed and make your cookies soaky. After it is completely cooled, store in airtight containers.

N.B: Don't attempt to remove the cookie from the sheet as soon as they come out of the oven, because they will be very soft and will crumble.