Christmas Baking: Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cookies

Posted in Food & Wine by Kim

Yums! I’ve shared my extreme love for peanut butter before, right? I’m sure you have heard all about it if you’ve read some of my other baking adventures. I figured if I could make baked goods healthy and delicious, why not, right? So, right away when I saw these Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cookies by The Gracious Pantry on Pinterest. I decided that I’ll do it for Christmas, although its not going to make it to Christmas…since there’s only 3 left.

Here’s how mine turned out!

Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cookies

I found this recipe right here: http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/clean-eating-peanut-butter-cookies/#ixzz2mWeJFnv0&i

There were a few modifications that I did. I couldn’t find honey in my house so I had to replace that with Agave Nectar. Also, I didn’t add extra peanuts as there were none in my house.

Right out of the oven

Still, this turned out pretty good. The texture was moist. The taste was very peanut-y rather than sweet is great. My mom still said I could decrease the sugar but its not too bad. I do admit that if I were to change that, I’d use less agave syrup than what it says because I realized that its actually sweeter than sugar so maybe thats why. Then I thought, do any of you know if agave nectar is sweeter than honey? What do you think? I need to look that up.

After the first bite!

I’d say this marathon is rather varietized, I’ve had some jam HERE and then some bread HERE, now some peanut butter in the form of cookies. I have two more recipes coming up so come back tomorrow,k? Psst…those look even better. 😉

Just one more bake day to go and I think I’m all set.

Do you like peanut butter? What do you think, agave nectar or honey is sweeter? What type of cookies do you like to eat on Christmas?

15Apr2013

Peanut Butter Cookies!

Posted in Food & Wine by Kim

I promised baking! And here it is! I only managed to start prep work at 11pm to make these but they were all done by midnight!

We all went to bed with a delicious baked goods smell in the air! Talk about some sweet dreams in candyland, right?

This time up, I was craving something with peanut butter. My boyfriend and I had miscoordinated and we ended up with two jars of peanut butter sitting in the fridge so seeing as thats the case, I decided to make something with it. I love cookies! And these ones were simple and quick. Only deal was that I was reading some comments and they all had some criticism about the sweetness or the lack of it. I never have problems with that though. The reason why I never liked peanut butter cookies were that they were overly sweet. If these weren’t, it sounds like a done deal 😉

I found this recipe on Martha Stewart and you can find it right here: http://www.marthastewart.com/339730/peanut-butter-cookies

Its nothing absolutely creative and I didn’t do much modification to it. The bake time is actually not accurate in this one. They were in the oven for 15 mins and it was already good. However, all ovens bake differently so just keep a close eye for when it turns golden brown. The only thing was that I didn’t sprinkle any peanuts on it because I just don’t have any at home.

The recipe yielded the exact amount (or almost) the same. I ended up with 25 cookies and they estimated 2 dozens :). Thats about the closest I’ve ever gotten what the recipe says. The texture of the cookies when the first came out of the oven were quite soft. It smelled extremely awesome! Once they cooled down, it turned to be more crunchy and crumbly. Less moist and soft. It wasn’t dry though. The first bite had a good mix being still a bit moist in the center and the outer part was crunchy and it somewhat melted into my mouth. It wasn’t too sweet either (for me)!

I would never eat peanut butter cookies in abundance but these ones do taste quite good. The key to this is to use a peanut butter which is less oily because it pulls out a lot of oil from both the peanut butter and the butter. My peanut butter was Just Peanuts so it had some peanut oil residue under the cookie. However, I imagine some of the other brands with other sorts of oil would create a less healthy blend and feel more greasy. I’m saying it could be a possibility. Not sure if that would actually happen. The taste of the peanut butter will also determine what your cookie will taste like.

Choose your peanut butter wisely 😉 Watch the baking time. Only two suggestions I offer for this.

This recipe is a winner for some delicious crunchy peanut butter cookies! Now I have the peanut butter cookies all settled in for both soft and crunchy! Its made the end of my weekend quite happy 🙂