Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies

This morning we were watching a program that brought up Bruce Jenner's name.  I contended that he was a past Olympian swimmer and my husband said no he was not.  I bet him cookies,  He won, I was thinking of Mark Spitts.  So Peanut butter cookies were his choice. Cookies are his favorite food group.

Of all the things I make, cookies are my least favorite thing to make unless they are bar cookies.  They seem to take more effort and time than it is worth.  When I am begged for peanut butter cookies, I generally do 1 jar peanut butter, 2 eggs, 2 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup flour. Mix it altogether, ball them, flatten and bake them. 

For my birthday, Steve gave me a box of cookie recipes called great cookies by Carol Walter.  It has fifty of her favorite recipes.  There are various kinds: bars, drops, around the world, big boys, rolled and glaze recipes.  In the big boy recipes there is a recipe called White Chocolate Whalers.  One of the main ingredients is crispy rice cereal.  A good one to use, to use up that uneaten box of cereal that is sitting on the shelf. ( nothing like crispy bars)  They all sound yummy but the bars are what I am leaning toward next or the White Chocolate Whalers are sticking in my mind since there is some crispy rice cereal sitting on the shelf.

I must say that these peanut butter cookies are really tasty.  The honey add just a wonderful touch.  The cookies were soft but not crumbly and best of all they were easy to make.  In the traditional form of peanut cookies, the instruction say to make a ball and then flatten them with a fork. I use a small cookie scoop to form them (no icky hands).  I like to use a glass with a pretty bottom or the meat pounder.  I chose the meat pounder for this batch.  I also dipped the pounder in sugar instead of flour to give the cookies an extra layer of flavor and texture.

The cookies went really well with a cup of tea this cold February Sunday.

Notice the bubbles on the tea.  When I was a little girl, my grandmother would pour us tea and then have us hurry and gather the bubbles in a teaspoon before they touched the side of the teacup, then sip the bubbles off the spoon. If you did, you would have good luck or something nice would happen to you.  The something nice was that I was spending time with her.

Her is the adapted recipe.

Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies

1 1/4 cup pastry flour (or AP)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 jar peanut butter
1/2 stick room temperature butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
3 tablespoons honey

1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar

1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup dry roasted peanuts ( crushed in a sandwich bag)

Whisk the first 4 ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

In a mixer bowl, mix the next three ingredients until well blended.

Add sugars and mix for 1 minute.  Then add the egg and vanilla and beat until mix is light and fluffy.  Fold in crushed peanuts. Chill for an hour.  Put scoops of dough on cookie sheet lined with a silicon sheet, flatten and bake at 350 degrees for 11 minutes or until the cookies just turn brownish on the edge.

Cool on sheet for about a minute and finish cooling on the rack.  Mine made 60 cookies but the recipe said made 40 cookies.  So expect to have the amount somewhere in the middle.

If you like this recipe and would like to get the cookie box  .click here: You won't be sorry.