{TWD} Peanut Butter Butter Criss Cross Cookies

Hundreds of years ago the Aztec civilization enjoyed a pasty substance made from mashed and ground peanuts. While they were definitely onto something, the Aztecs never got to experience one of peanut butter's crowning glories: the Peanut Butter Criss Cross Cookie, which just so happens to be this week's assigned recipe for the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group. The cookies feature the traditional distinctive cross-hatch pattern made by pressing the tines of a fork into the dough before baking the cookies.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- My favorite peanut butter cookie recipe produces a cookie that is loaded with peanut butter, and has peanut butter chips added for good measure. (The original recipe also calls for chocolate chips, but I'm something of a peanut butter cookie purist, so I baked them without chocolate.)

- I could tell from reading Dorie's recipe that her cookies would be different from what I'm used to baking. (you can find the recipe - in both French and English - by clicking over to this post by this week's TWD hostess Jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine) In Dorie's recipe, there's actually more butter in the dough than peanut butter.

- Dorie calls for a lot of chopped peanuts, but I left them out. Instead I used half smooth and half crunchy peanut butter in the dough. Next time I'd use all crunchy peanut butter. Once all of the other ingredients were added, the crunch from the peanut butter is actually quite subtle.

- I made half recipe, which gave a yield of 27 cookies

- Aside from omitting the nuts, I followed recipe exactly with one very small exception: I used dark brown sugar rather than light because that's what I had on hand.

- After forming balls of dough I chilled them for about half an hour before pressing the criss cross pattern with fork. This helped the pattern stay sharp and also helped keep the soft dough from spreading as the cookies baked in the oven.

- I baked the cookies at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

the verdict:

These cookies had a lovely texture - tender and delicate - with a definite but subdued peanut butter flavor. Rather than than an sturdy all-out peanut butter cookie like my old standby recipe, these cookies were more of a peanut butter flavored butter cookie, which makes sense given how prominent the butter is in the ingredient list. They were very good cookies but if I had to choose, I'd prefer more peanut butter.