Homemade Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe – Unsophisticook (2024)

FAQs

Why do my peanut butter cookies taste weird? ›

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.

The reason is that peanut butter cookie dough is dense, and unpressed, each cookie will not cook evenly. Using a fork to press the dough is a convenience of tool; bakers can also use a cookie shovel (spatula).

Why did my peanut butter cookies turn out hard? This is most likely to happen from over-baking your cookies. Make sure to take them out of the oven when they're still a bit soft in the middles, that way they can finish cooking on their cookie sheets outside the oven.

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.

This may not sound like a lot, but it is enough that it can affect the quality of your cookies – adding too much peanut butter can make them dry, hard, and crumbly.

Using too much flour will make your cookies too cakey, so try reducing the flour amount by two tablespoons. Avoid using cake flour instead; try a mix of all-purpose flour and bread flour for a more dense and chewy texture. Using too much baking powder. According to the science geeks at Serious Eats—we love you!

Mixing the ingredients by hand will take a little elbow grease, but it's manageable. This "dough" is a bit sticky, but grease your hands with some cooking spray to keep your "dough" from sticking to your hands. Once the cookies are ready to bake, you won't have tot wait long to enjoy them.

If you're wanting to use natural (no sugar added) peanut butter, the cookies will be less sweet and they will likely spread out more. Using natural peanut butter will change the structure and texture of the cookies. Why are my cookies dry and crumbly? This is most likely a classic case of using too much flour.

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.

The science is simple: According to the flour authorities over at Bob's Red Mill, cornstarch can help “soften the rigid proteins of the flour, resulting in a light and chewy dessert.” “The cornstarch complements the flour in absorbing the liquids, but won't develop gluten structure like the flour will,” stresses ...

How to tell when peanut butter cookies are done? ›

Unlike many other cookies, peanut butter biscuits only fully harden once they've been removed from the oven. Here's how to tell when peanut butter cookies are done: The tops of the cookies are a uniform light brown. They're soft to the touch but not moist or mushy.

According to The Kitchn, this occurs when you over-mix the dough. Mixing the dough naturally causes gluten to develop in the flour, and while you do need a good amount of gluten to give your cookies structure, too much of it will result in hard cookies.

1) Chilling cookie dough controls spread.

As the cookies bake, the fat in the chilled cookie dough takes longer to melt than room-temperature fat. And the longer the fat remains solid, the less cookies spread. In addition, the sugar in the dough gradually absorbs liquid.

We prefer natural peanut butter here, so you can dial in the sugar and salt amounts precisely, and smooth peanut butter over crunchy to better control the cookies' fat and moisture levels. Letting the cookie dough rest ensures the flour is fully hydrated, resulting in crisper edges and chewier middles.

Crisscrosses are the classic way to decorate peanut butter cookies, but you can also use a decorative cookie stamp or rolling pin. If you want to add a little sparkle, try rolling your cookies in coarse sparkling sugar just before baking.

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.

Peanut butter has an extremely long shelf life, so odds are low that it'll spoil before you can use it. But still, the nutty spread can spoil, as its high levels of fat content put it at risk of turning rancid. Spoiled peanut butter would result in a spread that has an off-putting smell, taste or appearance.

Factors like the type of sugar, flour, fat, leavening agents, and additional flavorings used in the recipe can all influence the final taste of the cookies.

Bake Club claims that over-baking, or even baking shortbread on too high a heat, can cause the butter to burn, leading to a sour or pungent aftertaste in the cookies.