How come it never occurred to me to use the meat tenderizer on peanut butter cookies before?
The fork-created cross-hatch is a peanut butter cookie staple, but the meat tenderizing mallet is fun and has the whole pattern built in.
I admit it was the lovely photo on the recipe that made me decide to give it a try, but I also liked the idea of a crisper, more shortbread-like cookie for a change of pace.
The ingredients are pretty standard, although I like the use of kosher salt instead of regular. The only change I made was to use whole wheat white flour instead of all purpose. I added baking soda and the kosher salt to the flour, and whisked them together instead of sifting.
I put that aside, then creamed the butter, vanilla, and the sugars together until “light and fluffy”. Delicious words, those. The recipe said to do that for 4 to 5 minutes, but the only thing I’ve ever had to keep going in the stand mixer that long was meringue, or maybe whipped cream. After a few minutes, everything was nicely combined, and I added the egg.
It was adding the peanut butter, though, that made everything start to look completely irresistible. (Skippy Natural, by the way.) The smoothness, the creamyness, the peanut butter deliciousness all started emanating from the bowl. I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t show up.
I added in the dry ingredients and let the mixer have at it for a while. When it got too thick, I finished the job by hand.
And then it was time to break out the fun baking tools. The cookie scoop and the tenderizer were going to combine to create an all-powerful cookie-making toolset. I used the scoop just to make sure the cookies were the same size, but rolled them into balls instead of just dropping them onto the tray.
Then I brought out the tenderizer, and cross-hatched. Is that a verb? Can it be? Just this once?
I sprinkled a little bit of sugar on top, because the recipe said to do so, and baked for what turned out to be between 11 and 12 minutes.
Juliet came along while the first batch was in, and insisted on helping. I understood completely. That mallet was hard to resist.
So are the cookies. Crisp on the outside, soft but not chewy on the inside, I think the texture will firm up a little more by tomorrow and they’ll be perfect. They’re hardly flawed now, though, and this time around I’ve made something all four of us can eat with equal relish.
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