Getting Closer to Finding the Best Peanut Butter Cookies

As some of you may recall, the perfect peanut butter cookies are one of the things I am searching for. Shortly after I posted about the peanut butter cookies I made for my brother, I was reading Kristen's blog Dine and Dish, and came across a post entitled Peanut Butter Perfection. I immediately saved this recipe and knew it would be the next peanut butter cookie I'd make. Unfortunately it was a while before I made them, but a recent trip from my aunt and uncle was the incentive I needed!

My mom mentioned to me that my aunt was a cookie lover, so when I found out she was coming to visit, I emailed her and asked what kind of cookies she'd like me to make for her. Her response was kind of odd to me - peanut butter and raisin cookies. And RAISIN? Weird. But who was I to argue. So the day before they were going to leave to go back home, I used the recipe from Kristen to make her peanut butter and raisin cookies. I did make a few without raisins too though.

I kind of wish that I had taken a closer look at the recipe before starting (I know you're always supposed to read through recipes before starting, but I'm not so good at doing this). Which reminds me of something else I don't do that I should start doing - cracking eggs into a separate bowl before adding them to something. I never even thought about eggs being rotten (with a blue-brown liquid inside!) since I've never come across one, but after reading a post on delicious:days about it, I really must remember to crack my eggs separately. Anyway, no more thinking about rotten eggs and back to yummy cookies.

The cookie recipe uses 4 1/2 cups of flour! That is an obscene amount of flour. I don't think I've made a cookie recipe that uses more than 2 1/2 cups. But then I doubt I've made such an extremely large batch of cookies as this recipe produced. Of course there's also a lot of butter, vanilla and other cookie things in there too. I was scared that the dough wouldn't be able to fit in my mixer, but thankfully it did. And wow it made a lot of cookies. A lot of cookies. Good thing my aunt has kids and grandkids to share them with when she went back home!

Now the real question is - did my search for the perfect peanut butter cookie recipe end here? This peanut butter cookie recipe is very very good, and I will be keeping it to make it again. However, I found that it wasn't peanut butter-y enough for me. It was more of a vanilla peanut butter cookie. (Which I didn't think would taste good, given my last let's-add extra-vanilla-to-peanut-butter-cookies experiment. But it was actually quite delicious.) That being said, I really liked the texture of the cookies, and a super added bonus is that they stay soft for at least a week (I didn't try them after that) which I find is not too common in soft cookies. I'd like to play around with this recipe a bit, add less vanilla, add more peanut butter, maybe some chopped peanuts, and see if I can find my ultimate peanut butter cookie recipe. There are a couple other peanut butter cookie recipes out there that I want to try too though.

Britta's Peanut Butter Cookies
Adapted from Gourmet, July 2007 Adapted from The Willows
Found at Dine & Dish

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 sticks (3/4 pound) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/3 cups creamy peanut butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs plus 2 large yolks
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat together butter, peanut butter, sugars, and oil with an electric mixer at high speed just until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes in a stand mixer or longer with a handheld. Add eggs, yolks, and vanilla and beat until just incorporated. Reduce speed to low, then add flour mixture in 3 batches, mixing until well incorporated.

Scoop scant 1/4 cups of dough about 2 inches apart onto 2 ungreased large baking sheets.* Flatten mounds with floured tines of a fork, making a crosshatch pattern, into 2 1/2-inch cookies (about 1/2 inch thick).

Bake until slightly puffed and golden around edges, about 30 minutes total. Transfer cookies to racks to cool. Continue with the remaining dough.