Irene's Peanut Butter Cookies

I have a love/hate relationship with making cookies. I love mixing up a batch & sneaking bits of raw dough; I hate standing around for minutes at a time waiting for each tray to bake. Also, the ovens I've used in the last several years have tended to run hot and as much as I've tried to adjust the temperature, I just am not pleased with the results. The cookies spread too much & the edges get darker than the center and I get frustrated.

Irene was my paternal great-grandma and I'm fortunate enough to have known her into my teens. She lived to be 94 and was just a character. She loved watching WWF, the Seahawks, and the Sonics; she wore a perpetually crooked wig; and I believe there's only one photograph of her in trousers. She always wore house dresses. She grew African violets and had a dozen or more in her living room window. I've tried to have a few over the years in her memory and I just don't have good luck with them. Probably because I prefer my living environment much cooler than Irene and the violets did! At least I can make her peanut butter cookies.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1/2 cup shortening i.e. Crisco or good ol' lard, room temperature

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 to 3 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine 3 cups of flour and baking soda in a separate bowl & whisk to combine.

Using a large mixing bowl or stand mixer, combine the butter, shortening, brown sugar, and white sugar. Cream together for at least 2 minutes; you want the resulting paste to be light in color and creamy. Add the peanut butter and vanilla beat well. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Tip in about half the flour mix and mix well, then add the remainder of the flour. If you need to, add up to a half cup more of flour to make a thicker dough.

Portion out the dough on ungreased baking sheets. Using a fork dipped in granulated sugar, gently press down the dough, creating a criss-cross pattern on top.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the edges are brown and the tops of the cookies don't look greasy. Leave on the baking sheets for an additional two minutes before carefully transferring to coolong racks.

Cook's Notes:

1. I prefer crunchy peanut butter for everything, even Thai peanut sauce. You can certainly use creamy peanut butter if that's what you have in your pantry.

2. Listen. Creaming the fats and sugars together is really important. Sugar granules have sharp little edges and as they're agitated during the mixing, they cut into the fats and add air to create a leavening effect.

3. Don't over-bake the cookies; check them after 8 minutes and see if the tops have lost their sheen & gotten a little darker on the edges. Cookies also continue to bake as they sit on the baking sheets. You want them to cool for at least 2 minutes before transferring to wire cooling racks so they don't fall apart.

4. These are nice sturdy cookies which freeze well and even ship well. 

5. You can easily turn them into peanut butter blossom cookies which just means that you place an unwrapped Hershey's Kiss in the center of each unbaked cookie. Yum!