My Grandma's Legendary Peanut Butter Cookies
As a young, athletic girl, I would hop the lattice fence in our backyard and run for a block until I got to my grandmother’s house. Once there, we'd make batch after batch of cookies, one of my favorites being her legendary peanut butter cookies. You’ll know it is an old-fashioned recipe when it calls for that old-time Crisco shortening—her secret ingredient. The shortening is key to making the cookies extra crisp. One anecdote here: my grandfather used to say he broke half the things he tried to fix. I feel that way in the kitchen, making silly mistakes. One of my all-time blunders was adding ½ cup of salt instead of sugar to a batch of these cookies. I even had the containers labeled, but they looked the same! Don’t repeat my mistake but do try these cookies. You won’t be sorry.
Ingredients
- ½ cup Crisco, All-Vegetable Shortening, found on Amazon or at grocery stores like Safeway
- ½ cup crunchy peanut butter, better with some oil
- ½ cup chopped peanuts
- 1 egg
- ½ cup white granulated sugar + ¼ cup for sprinkling
- ½ cup packed light brown sugar
- ½ t. vanilla extract
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ½ t. baking soda
- ½ t. sea salt
Directions
- Step 1 Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Step 2 In a large mixing bowl, beat the shortening and peanut butter with an electric or stand mixer until creamy and light. Next, add ½ cup of white and brown sugar and continue to beat (be sure to only add ½ cup of white sugar, as the extra ¼ cup is reserved for the sprinkling). Then, pour in the vanilla and toss in the egg while you keep beating. Finally, coarsely chop the peanuts and add to the batter in the large mixing bowl.
- Step 3 Next, measure out the flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl. Mix well.
- Step 4 Now, combine the wet ingredients from step 2 (the shortening, peanut butter, sugar, vanilla, egg, and peanuts) with the dry ingredients from step 3 (the flour, baking soda, and salt). Mix by hand or in a stand mixer until incorporated.
- Step 5 Finally, grease two baking sheets with butter. Roll out 16 (1 ½”) balls of dough in your hand and place 8 on each baking sheet. Then, add ¼ cup of white sugar to a small mixing bowl and wet a fork, dipping it in the sugar. Next, use your fork to press the ball of dough down, leaving a crisscross mark for a disk that is still ¾” thick. Sprinkle with any remaining sugar.
- Step 6 Bake for 8-10 minutes, depending on your oven’s temperature. Mine were ready at 10 minutes. I sprinkled some more white sugar on top as the cookies cooled. Cookies are best stored in an airtight container in the fridge for a week. Serve and enjoy!
As a young girl, I’d sprint one block to my grandma’s house and we’d spend the afternoon, immersed in one of our favorite pastimes: baking, Needless to say, I grew up on these legendary peanut butter cookies, which are decoratively crisscrossed and sprinkled with sugar.
NUTRITONAL INFORMATION:
Nutritional Information: serving size: 1 cookie, servings per recipe: 1, calories: 199, total fat: 13.1 g., saturated fat: 3.9 g., cholesterol: 14 mg., sodium: 140 mg., total carbohydrate: 17.3 g., dietary fiber: 1.1 g., total sugars: 9.9 g., protein: 4.4 g., calcium: 11 mg., iron: 1 mg., potassium: 103 mg., vitamin D: 1 mcg.