Monday, April 23, 2012

Peanut-butter-aholic...

I have two confessions to make.  First, I am addicted to peanut butter.  Completely and utterly obsessed with it. I eat it every day.  As a sandwich, off the back of a spoon, smeared on a piece of cheddar cheese, it doesn't matter.  Creamy, crunchy, honey roasted...it's all heavenly. I can often be found late at night, standing in front of the open refrigerator, eating it straight from the tub.  My second confession is a bit more embarrassing than my first (hard to imagine something worse than the image of me, in my pjs, with peanut butter smeared on my chin and knuckles, but it's true).

I am a peanut butter snob.  There.  I said it.  Out loud...well, on the internet anyways.

I turn my nose up at the impostors on the grocery store shelves that have the audacity to call themselves peanut butter.   I sneer when I see ingredients like sugar and corn syrup at the top of an ingredient list for this food of the gods.  Peanut butter should contain two things and two things only.  Peanuts.  Salt.  That's it.  Now, in my defense, this attitude isn't entirely my fault.  I ate a lot of pb & j's growing up and the only peanut butter we ever had in the house was the all natural kind that had to be kept in the fridge.  It had a weird layer of fat on the top that had to be mixed in, but once it was.....mmm, delicious! Natural peanut butter has come a long way since then...now you don't have to stir in a fatty layer of goo!  So, I guess I have my mom to both blame and thank for this attitude of snobbery towards all other peanut butter products....so THANKS mom!

I love adding peanut butter to baked goods.  It makes a great addition to cookies, cupcakes, and bars and can even be the star of a pie or mousse.  I wanted to share a ridiculously easy recipe for flourless peanut butter cookies that I hope you and yours will enjoy as much as my family always does!

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chips

  • 1 cup peanut butter (any brand will do...I don't expect the world to be as snooty as me)
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine first 5 ingredients in a bowl. Mix in the chocolate chips.  This mixture will be coarse in appearance.  

Using wet hands, form the dough into balls, about a tablespoon in size, and place on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.  Bake cookies for 10 minutes and allow to cool on cookie sheet for an additional 5 minutes before placing them on a cooling rack to cool completely.


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