The Best Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe - Retro Housewife Goes Green (2024)

FAQs

Why are my peanut butter cookies pale? ›

The type of sugar you use makes a big difference

If your peanut butter cookie recipe calls for white sugar, you can expect them to be lighter in color. According to Cook's Illustrated, dark brown sugar and honey will yield a more significantly browned cookie.

Peanut Butter Cookie Mix Hacks

Easy Add-Ins: After creating the dough according to the peanut butter cookie mix instructions, try introducing 1 cup of add-ins like REESE'S PIECES, toffee bits, dried fruits, mini marshmallows or even cooked bacon bits, if you're feeling adventurous!

Your other source of fat should be butter, not shortening. Butter will make your cookies taste buttery; shortening will make them taste suspiciously vacant, like Katy Perry's voice post-autotune. Yes, shortening yields chewier cookies than butter does, because butter contains water and shortening doesn't.

Conventional creamy peanut butter works best for peanut butter cookie recipes because it has a smooth and even texture. My favorite creamy peanut butter brands are Skippy or Jif. Natural peanut butter, made up of just peanuts and salt, is typically very oily and hard to get even.

Brown sugar adds a beautiful color as well as a more complex flavor. They'll also make cookies chewier, softer, and thicker than white sugar. Adding too much can result in dark brown cookies. Adding too little results in paler cookies.

These cookies are undercooked. Usually the person inquiring defends that with, "the recipe said 8 minutes and I used a timer." This is when experience comes into play. Light colored cookies with dark speckles typically indicates that the cookies are underbaked.

Using too much baking soda or baking powder can really mess up a recipe, causing it to rise uncontrollably and taste terrible.

If you don't flatten the cookies first, then the fork does double duty – it performs both functions. One very subtle result of creating the pattern is that the little tips of dough bake up crisper than the rest of the cookie, giving you both a bit of additional texture and deeper taste where the dough is more baked.

The natural sweetness of peanuts, combined with creaminess, creates a taste that is both satisfying and indulgent. Some over-the-counter peanut butter brands also contain added sweeteners, enhancing the appeal to those with a crazy sweet tooth.

Cookies Made with Butter vs Shortening

Those made with only shortening bake higher and spread less during baking. The butter cookie provides better flavor and a crispier exterior with browning around edges and a chewy interior; the shortening cookie spreads less, holding its shape better while baking.

Why do my peanut butter cookies not taste like peanut butter? ›

The most common mistake with peanut butter cookies is using the wrong type of peanut butter. The BEST peanut butter for today's cookies is a processed creamy peanut butter, preferably Jif or Skippy.

So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.

Should you refrigerate peanut butter cookie dough before baking? Optional! This is a really soft dough, so it's easier to handle if you chill it a bit (plus it gives the flavors a chance to deepen). But if you put them in the oven right away, it will work just fine.

Q: Why are my cookies so puffy and cakey? Whipping too much air into the dough. That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. So don't overdo it when you're creaming together the butter and sugar.

Here are some signs to look out for: Colour: Raw or undercooked cookies tend to have a pale appearance, lacking that golden or slightly browned hue that indicates they're fully baked. Watch for cookies that still have a doughy or unbaked look.

If you opt for all cake flour cookies, less gluten is formed when you mix the cookie dough. The resulting cookie consistency post-baking is delicate, softer, fluffier, and, well, more cake-like. The color may end up paler, and the edges might not be as crispy.

Peanut Butter comes in a variety of textures, but it's almost always the same shade of brown. This is because color makes up an essential aspect of the standard the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grades peanut butter on.