3 ingredient peanut butter cookies
Chances are good that you already have everything you'll need to whip up a batch of these cookies in your kitchen right this minute.
Just three ingredients - peanut butter, sugar, an egg, and in less than half an hour you could be enjoying a warm peanut butter cookie fresh from the oven. In fact, you could be enjoying about eighteen warm cookies.
This recipe is dangerous like that, it's too easy, and impulse baking can become a problem. Just stir three ingredients together, roll into balls, squish the balls into cookies with a fork, and bake. You will have the dough mixed and ready on the cookie sheet, and the mixing bowl and measuring cups washed, before the oven even comes up to temperature.
This recipe is also very adaptable. Whether you are using a grocery store brand-name variety of peanut butter or homemade peanut butter, crunchy or smooth, even almond butter, whatever you have on hand will work. The texture of the cookies will vary according the type of peanut butter you use; creamy or smooth peanut butter results in a softer cookie, and crunchy or chunky peanut butter results in a more crispy cookie. The batch I made using almond butter was soft with a finer crumb than the peanut butter cookies, and utterly delicious with addition of a splash of vanilla extract. I have to say, my all time favourite version was made with crunchy peanut butter and sprinkled with a pinch of fleur de sel. These guys were sweet, salty, crunchy perfection.
To make these cookies yourself, first set the oven to 325F, and measure into a mixing bowl:
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 large egg
Stir the ingredients together until everything is combined.
Roll the dough into balls about the size of a walnut (a heaping tablespoon full) and arrange the balls about 2 inches apart onto a nonstick cookie sheet (or line the cookie sheet with parchment).
Use a fork to swish the balls down into cookies (about 1/4 inch thick).
Bake for 15-17 minutes, until lightly browned.
Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes or so before removing them to a cooling rack, they're very soft when they first come out of the oven and break easily. You wouldn't want to have to eat too many broken cookies...
This recipe was adapted (slightly) from this original Super-Easy Peanut Butter Cookie recipe from Kraft.
