Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

One of my favorite cookie cookbooks EVER is the Mrs. Fields Cookie Book, currently out of print but available used at Amazon.com for $2.26 – and let me tell you it will be $2.26 well spent.  Log on and buy one before they are gone forever.  Yesterday we made her perfectly chewy, fabulously tasty peanut butter cookies.  The only change I make is that we feed our family chocolate obsession by adding high-quality bittersweet chocolate chips to the batter.

Mrs. Fields Peanut Butter Cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 ¼ cups brown sugar, firmly packed

1 ¼ cups white sugar

1 cup salted butter, softened

3 large eggs

1 cup creamy peanut butter (we used Kirkland Organic Creamy Peanut Butter)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ½ cups best quality semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips (optional but SO GOOD)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

     
In a medium bowl combine flour, soda, and salt.  Whisk until blended.  Set aside.

     
In the bowl of an electric mixer blend together the butter and sugars until it they form a grainy paste.  Add eggs, one at a time until just blended.  Add peanut butter and vanilla and mix on medium speed until the batter is light and fluffy. 

Add the flour mixture and blend at low speed until just mixed.  Do not over-mix.

Take the bowl out of the mixer and hand blend in the chocolate chips – well, not actually with your HANDS, I use a large spoon, but you knew that – right?

Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  If you find the batter is too soft to handle you can put the bowl into the fridge for 15-20 minutes first so that the dough hardens a bit.  It will make forming the cookies a bit easier.  These cookies SPREAD so leave lots of room between them.  Bake for 18-22 minutes until they are slightly brown around the edges.  Do not over-bake or they will be crunchy, rather than chewy.  Transfer immediately to wax paper to cool.

I find that if we bake a lot of cookies, we eat a lot of cookies.  It is some sort of immutable mathematical theorem.  My solution is that we bake only eight cookies and we divide the cookie batter into small containers and freeze the remainder.  This recipe will produce 2-3 containers for freezing in addition to the eight you bake right away.  Enjoy.