Classic Peanut Butter Cookies
Servings: 24 cookies
These lightly colored cookies are slightly soft and mildly chewy, with a satisfying peanut butter taste. We tested them with chunky peanut butter, but smooth/creamy works even better.
Tips from King Arthur Flour: This recipe was developed to use traditional supermarket-style peanut butter. If you use all-natural peanut butter, grind your own or use low-fat or low-salt peanut butter, the cookies won’t turn out as described. For even softer cookies, you can use 8 tablespoons (1 stick) of butter instead of the 1/3 cup vegetable shortening.
1⁄3 cup vegetable shortening, at room temperature (see headnote)
1⁄2 cup granulated sugar
1⁄2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3⁄4 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy; not natural-style; see headnote)
1 1⁄2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
Water (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone liners.
Combine the shortening, both sugars, egg, vanilla extract and peanut butter in a mixing bowl, stirring until smooth.
Add the flour, baking soda and salt to the peanut butter mixture, stir gently until everything is well combined. It may take awhile for this rather dry dough to come together; and when it does, it’ll be quite stiff. Only if necessary, drizzle in enough water to make the dough cohesive.
Drop the cookie dough by tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets (a tablespoon cookie scoop works well here), leaving 2 inches between them. Use a fork to flatten each cookie to about 1 ⁄ 2 -inch thick, making a crosshatch or other design.
Bake (middle rack) 12 to 16 minutes, until the cookies are barely beginning to brown around the edges; the tops will not be browned. Let them sit on baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before serving or storing. Adapted from Kingarthurflour.com.