Martha's Peanut-Butter Sandwich Cookies Are a Must-Bake Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How to make packaged peanut butter cookies better? ›

Baking requires precision, and if you find your homemade cookies are falling apart, then there's a good chance you have been using too much flour (via Fine Cooking).

The most common mistake with peanut butter cookies is using the wrong type of peanut butter. The BEST peanut butter for today's cookies is a processed creamy peanut butter, preferably Jif or Skippy.

So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.

Add brown sugar

Adding it to the pre-made dough will give it more sweetness, a chewier texture, moisture and that homemade flavor you're craving. You can also melt butter with brown sugar and incorporate it into the dough for extra tender, chewier cookies.

Should you refrigerate peanut butter cookie dough before baking? Optional! This is a really soft dough, so it's easier to handle if you chill it a bit (plus it gives the flavors a chance to deepen). But if you put them in the oven right away, it will work just fine.

If you don't flatten the cookies first, then the fork does double duty – it performs both functions. One very subtle result of creating the pattern is that the little tips of dough bake up crisper than the rest of the cookie, giving you both a bit of additional texture and deeper taste where the dough is more baked.

To avoid this, try using as little flour as possible while preparing to roll your dough. Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

This may not sound like a lot, but it is enough that it can affect the quality of your cookies – adding too much peanut butter can make them dry, hard, and crumbly.

Why add milk to cookie dough? ›

Although it may seem obvious, the most important role extra milk plays is adding a little more liquid. As cookie dough is very low in hydration, that two tablespoons of milk have more of an impact here than in something with higher hydration, such as cake batter.

Best for Baking

Spooning this out of the jar, you'll find that Reese's peanut butter is super thick and creamy. This texture, according to Catherine, makes this brand ideal for baking. Recipes like Peanut Butter Cream Pie and Chocolate Scotcheroos will benefit from this decadent texture.

Warm weather during the summer can bring on butter bleed, which happens when the butter from the cookie stains the royal icing and leaves it looking blotchy.

If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

Mixing the ingredients by hand will take a little elbow grease, but it's manageable. This "dough" is a bit sticky, but grease your hands with some cooking spray to keep your "dough" from sticking to your hands. Once the cookies are ready to bake, you won't have tot wait long to enjoy them.

Some ideas I've used are: milk chocolate chips, pecans, toffee pieces, white chocolate chunks and dark chocolate chunks. Just use about 1 cup or 4-5 ounces per 10 cookies. Peanut Butter Cookies 3 ways!

You can further augment the gustatory potential of the peanut butter by using both vanilla extract and almond extract in your dough—just a splash of the latter is enough to boost your cookies' nuttiness (while remaining subtle enough that no one will cotton onto the presence of drupe essence in your legume dessert).

Once the butter is lightly bubbling, place cookies in the pan. Leave them in just long enough so that they begin to brown on the bottom. Remove from heat, and with your (very clean) hand, slightly dent the tops and sides to create a slightly "homemade" look.