Happy National Peanut Butter Cookie Day!

I wasn't feeling well last night, plus I'd consumed three Central Perk-sized mugs of tea late in the evening. I found myself reading, and catching up on 'Net stuff.

I discovered that today, Tuesday, was National Peanut butter Cookie day. Well, heck; can't let that one pass me by, can I?

I was up anyway, and I'd recently blown through a book, so I was feeling a bit antsy...like doing something.

Matt loves peanut butter cookies, but as I recalled, we don't like the same kind.

I like my mom's. He likes the ones on the back of a Jif jar.

I was certain I had a Matt-approved recipe in my box, but despite checking four times (and even varying my search locations), couldn't find it.

I then turned to the many volumes of cookbooks producing groans from our bookshelves. Tried Martha. Ina. Baking-only books.

Nothing.

Well, no...that's not entirely true. I found recipes for Peanuty cookies. For peanut butter bars.

I found recipes requiring an extended stay in the refrigerator. It was already past four am, so they were rejected immediately.

Finally, I started pulling volumes from my "Oldies" shelf. Books which, in some cases, have been around close to ninety years.

I was starting to believe there was no such thing as a proper pb cookie recipe, when in a last-ditch effort, I grabbed a community cookbook from a small town in Wisconsin.
It's lost both covers, and presumably a few pages along the way. It's held together by a single, yet rather thick, silver ring. There's no idex page, but fortunately, chapter divisions are listed at the tops of pages.

I located the "Cookies" section, and after shuddering as I flipped past several cookies-which-shall-not-be-named recipes, found exactly what I was looking for.

Basic. Flour, sugars, vanilla, eggs, peanut butter, salt, baking powder, and (in this case) shortening. Mix things together, roll into balls, apply the familiar criss-cross pattern with a fork, bake, and sit back and enjoy the redolent pb goodness.

This being an older book (I didn't check at the time, but I believe it was published in the late fifties or early sixties), there was the implication that you knew what you were doing with these recipes. An oven temperature was given, a baking time was not. Also, size...roll into 'small' balls.

What, exactly, is small? The recipe claimed to produce 4 dozen cookies. I found myself looking at considerably more than 4 dozen around seven this morning...

But, they looked good. I used a cookie instead of the alarm clock to awaken Matt today; holding it under his nose till consciousness hit him. As mornings go, it's not a bad way to begin.



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Tagged with: Food and Drink + Cookies + Peanut Butter + Baking + Cookbooks