Peanut Butter Cookies

Due to Christmas break, I forgot about the fact that I have no flour.  I remembered this fact about halfway through making a new loaf of bread.  I dug through the cupboard in hopes a bag of flour would magically appear.  I found a little bit of whole wheat flour - less than the bread recipe called for, but it was all I had.  As near as I can tell, it survived, but only a taste test will tell. 

I had also planned on making Peanut Butter Coffee Cake.  All week, I've been thinking about it, so by this morning, I was craving something peanut-buttery.  That's when I hit the no-flour-roadblock.  Instead of letting it ruin my Saturday, I did the only thing I could think of: I Googled it.

I found a recipe for Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies.  Skeptical but willing to try anything once, I gave it a chance.  It's the easiest recipe I've ever found, and the results of the scientific taste test are conclusive - delicious!  Always a team player, I'm sharing the recipe with everyone else (or at least the 3 people that read this blog).  I found it in about 3 different places, so I'm not sure where the original came from or I would give that genius credit for it.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar (I used half white sugar and half brown sugar)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon baking soda
(I added 1/2 cup of chocolate chips as a variation.)

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Beat together peanut butter and sugar with an electric mixer until smooth.
3. Add egg and baking soda, and beat until well mixed.  (This is where I added the chocolate chips.)
4. Roll 1 teaspoon of dough into a ball and place on baking sheet.  Flatten with tines of a fork in a criss-cross pattern.
5. Bake until puffed and golden pale, about 8-10 minutes.
6. Cool on baking sheet about 2 minutes before transferring to wire rack.  (I usually ended up leaving mine for about 5 minutes - they are very fragile when still warm). 

Crumbly (especially when warm) and VERY peanut-buttery.  I suppose they would go down well with a glass of milk, if you are so inclined, which I am not. :-)

I doubled the recipe and ended up with over 5 dozen small cookies.  This picture makes them look huge, but they're really not.