This is a recipe I've been making since the age of thirteen. They tend to go
fast regardless of how big I make the cookies. Eating the batter before
putting it in the oven is optional.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream shortening in with sugars, eggs, and vanilla. For the best-tasting and
smoothest batter, even if you absolutely feel the need to use an electric
beater later, start by hand-whipping the mix. Don't ask me why this works.
It just does. I don't know why my car runs better after I wash it either,
but maybe it's that whole loving attention thing.
Of course it also takes a long time to cream shortening by hand, so I have no
problem with anyone who wants to use an electric beater afterwards. I'm just
letting you know.
Anyway, once you're done with that whipping and beating, you should have
a brownish-beige cream that is perfectly smooth, with the possible exception
of spare grains of sugar here and there. Now is the time to add the peanut
butter. (See above comments about hand-whipping.) You can also add peanut
butter chips here, too, if you so desire, or whatever other little extras
you may have a strange craving for. And there's nothing wrong with adding
more than one cup of peanut butter if you really like peanut butter; I
encourage it, in fact.
See above comment on consistency; your brownish-beige should now be a lot more
brownish than beige. Sift two cups of flour and a teaspoon of baking
soda into the mix--or less if you really, really want rich cookies. Mix, mix,
mix.
These cookes have phenomenal powers of expansion. I like taking a big glob
of batter in my hand and slapping those babies on the (unbuttered and
un-Pammed) cookie sheet myself, which makes a portable dessert you can munch
on all
day long. But if you're feeling a little more modest, you can dish out the
dough with a teaspoon or tablespoon. If you're feeling like Martha Stewart,
you can make cute little "crosses" in the cookies with the prongs of a fork.
I never noticed any difference in taste with that, myself, but it could do
interesting things to the peanut butter chips.
Keep an eye on the cookies while they're baking: the baking time depends
very much on taste and you're oven's particular idiosyncracies. 11-15 minutes
is recommended, unless you like your peanut butter cookies gooey or burned.
But these are peanut butter cookies, not hardtack, so treat them right. And
if they take up more than one cookie sheet and you have to leave some batter in
bowl, be sure to cover and refrigerate it--the dough dries up fast.
These World's Best Peanut Butter Cookies go with any dish!