| Step 1: Wait until 2:20 a.m. (that's in the
morning). This is necessary for the gravitational effects of the planets to properly
mix the ingredients. (No, really.) |
|
|
|
|
Step 2: Assemble the ingredients.
1 c. shortening
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla |
2-1/2 c. flour
2 t. soda
1 c. peanut butter
1/2 t. salt
chocolate |
|
| Step 3: Mix the shortening, sugar, eggs and vanilla. This
is what a cup of raw shortening looks like. Appetizing, huh? |
|
|
|
|
This is what a measuring cup that previously held
shortening looks like after trying to get all of the shortening out . . . |
| And this is what all of those wonderfully healthy
ingredients look like prior to being homogenized. Yes, you eat that. |
|
|
|
|
[Begin Interlude on Quality Ingredients]: It's important
to choose quality ingredients for whatever baking you're doing. Sure they may cost a
little more, but it limits your bragging abilities when you use substandard
ingredients. Case in point: vanilla extract. This is a bottle of real
vanilla extract. It's about four times as expensive as the fake stuff (which is
made from wood-pulp or coal tar; ick). |
Despite their similarity in bottle shape
and color, these are not real vanilla. Do not be confused! Using them
in your peanut butter cookies will most likely earn you some funny looks (especially the
anise extract; for those of you unfamiliar with it, this is black licorice flavoring; I
know, I know, "why don't they just call it 'pure black licorice flavoring
extract'?"). |
|
|
|
|
It kind of makes you wonder, though, what with the bottles
so similar and all, if they're in some sort of bottle gang or something. What really
goes on in the cupboard when the lights are out? Do the other Pure Extracts get
together and confront the Vanilla? Are they like "Hey, what's up with you
making cookies without us? I thought we were union?" Do they beat the
coal tar out of the Vanilla while the Peppermint keeps an eye out? |
| And what about the Artificial Vanilla? You'd think
Artie would stick up for his cousin, but nooooooo. He just lets the Pure Extracts
rough up the Vanilla at will. Why? 'Cause he's passed out in the gutter,
that's why! And that's why you should buy pure ingredients.
[End Interlude on Quality Ingredients] |
|
|
|
|
[Begin Interlude on Putting the Quality Ingredients Away] Please
note that if you must try to put all four bottles back in the cupboard at once, please do
not do so directly above an open container of flour. Newton is right. Objects
fall. |
| Maybe the other three bottles pushed him . . .
[End Interlude on Putting the Quality Ingredients Away] |
|
|
|
|
Okay, where were we. Oh yes. Mixing.
Which does not count as an aerobic exercise. Sorry. Just a little word of
advice. Keep your fingers out of the mixer. Spoons aren't particularly
mixer-friendly, either. I have yet to get a spatula caught in one, so I can only
speculate on the spatula-mixer relationship, but I'm almost willing to wager they aren't
the best of friends either. |
| Step 4: Add the peanut butter. This brings us
to one of the great puzzles of modern times: how to measure a cup of peanut butter.
Its viscosity, comparable to the shortening, prevents it from being easily poured, but
unlike the shortening it comes in a container far too small to accept a measuring
cup. I usually end up "glopping" out spoonfuls into the measuring cup until
it's a little more than full and then leveling it out with the spatula. Not exactly
precise but the people at work who get free cookies don't complain. |
|
|
|
|
Add the peanut butter to the mix and let it run for
awhile. I don't know exactly how long you need to let it run, but I've found that 30
minutes is a good round number. (The mixer gets a little warm, but I've solved that
problem by putting ice cubes on top of it. American ingenuity at its best!) |
| Step 5: Mix the dry ingredients. This brings
us to a little diatribe on flour. Flour is evil. Flour always
manages to get everywhere. It's a powder that clings to itself, so it won't pour,
but applying any sort of pressure to it (such as, I dunno, trying to put it in a
measuring cup) causes it to follow weird fluid dynamics that make it disperse into
the air and quickly cover every available surface, including your shirt. And if
that's not a good enough indication of the great evilness that is flour, just try cleaning
up that spilled flour. When you add water to it the stuff becomes paste!
That's right, the stuff we used to make back in grade school because they didn't
trust us with superglue. Any damp cloth used on this stuff quickly becomes saturated
with edible glue. The horror! |
|
|
|
|
Step 6: Combine the dry ingredients with the liquid
mixture. And scoff at Newton as the peanut butter mixture defies gravity! (The
bowl, however, will not, so don't drop it.) |
| You could have a friend take a picture of you
stirring, but this likely won't be an option? Why? Because it's 2:30 in
the bloody morning! Luckily my camera has a timer. And the ability to
delete unwanted pictures so I could take this shot over and over again until I found one
that was only borderline geeky. I'm not actually stirring here, by the way. I
found that if I actually stirred the mixture, my hand came out blurry. So yes, I'm
posing. :P |
|
|
|
|
Voila! One batch of peanut butter cookie dough! |
| Step 7: Form the dough into balls and place them on
a cookie sheet. Depending on the desired type of cookie (see below), make
criss-cross marks with a fork, smash them flat or leave them round. Put into a
preheated oven and bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Normally I make only one
kind of peanut butter cookie, but I decided to experiment a bit this time. I made
one traditional batch with the criss-cross marks for those people at my office who don't
like chocolate. These are the kind my mom made when I was a kid and what I think of
when I hear "peanut butter cookie." |
|
|
|
|
In addition, I decided to do some in chocolate.
Although normally a Christmas cookie, I made some "kiss" cookies for Lane.
To make these, leave the dough in a ball and bake as normal, but take the cookies out a
minute early. Immediately upon removing from the oven, press chocolate kisses into
the tops of the cookies until the edges crack. Then put them back in the oven for
the remaining minute. Of course, to do this you have to peel the foil off of a ton of
Hershey's Kisses. The bag of kisses I bought included "kissable messages,"
which I guess are a combination of fortune cookies and Valentines. I wasn't
that impressed (I don't really want to give a note that says "I Love You" to
just anyone, but you can't read the note until you unwrap the kiss . . .). Luckily,
it would be improper to leave the notes in the cookies, so I just pitched them.
|
| This is a batch of cookies fresh from the oven, with one
kiss already pushed firmly into its base. |
|
|
|
|
Step 8: Remove to a cooling rack. The kisses
will be very soft (hey, get your mind back on the food!), so make sure you don't bump them
until they cool (a refrigerator or freezer may help . . .). |
| I also tried a little experiment with dipping the cookies
into chocolate. To do that, I smashed the cookies flat before baking and melted some
chocolate on the stove by floating a glass cup in a pan of simmering water and adding
chocolate chips until melted. I dipped each cookie halfway into the cup, then placed
it on a sheet of waxed paper to cool. This was my first attempt at
"dipped" cookies, and they turned out okay (not as phenomenal as I'd hoped, but
they're edible). |
|
|
|
|
They did, however, get good reviews from the official
judges. |
