Almond Enriched Peanut Butter Cookies

I love peanut butter cookies. I actually love a lot of cookies – mainly the sickly sweet ones. I have a fierce sweet tooth and cookies hit the spot better than most cakes. I try to make all my own sweets because I figure if I’m going to eat junk food it’s less junky if it comes from my kitchen where I can control the ingredients to some extent. Originally I thought making my own would also cut down on my consumption but that didn’t work 🙂

Now I have the great excuse of cookie making as a way of using up my chickens’ eggs. I’m not expected to only eat them poached, am I? And since I started making my Almond Milk, I have a lot of ground almonds to find good uses for as well.

All those strategies converged in my new-and-improved almond enriched peanut butter cookie recipe.

1) Blend until creamy:

• 1/2 cup softened (I microwave it and it’s pretty much melted) butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar

2) Beat in:

• 1 egg
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3) Add 1/2 cup ground almonds or almond meal

4) Stir in:

• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• +/- 1 cup flour – The amount of flour depends on how dry your almonds are. I used a bit more than 1 cup because my ground almonds are very wet. I imagine if you bought almond meal you’d need less than 1 cup of flour. Add less than you think you’ll need then keep adding a couple of tablespoons at a time until the consistency is okay for forming into balls.

5) Roll dough into small balls and place on a baking tray. Press down with tines of fork.

6) Bake at 190 C for 10-12 minutes (until golden brown)

7) Let cool on tray for 5 minutes before removing and transferring to a cooling rack (this just makes it easier/possible to get the cookies off the tray)

I store my cookies in a sealed container to stop them going soft or hard (depending on the current climate) but I have no idea how long they’d last – they are lucky to make it 2 or 3 days around me.

This recipe makes 40 cookies plus about 5 worth of cookie dough snacks. Being environmentally aware, I couldn’t justify keeping the oven going for 4 cookies so I ate the dough straight from the bowl. Something I always do, maybe just not normally this much!

This recipe is nuttier than my normal peanut butter cookies (this recipe minus the almonds). I think the overall effect is a much richer snack. And maybe even a tiny bit healthier?

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