The News-Herald Blogs: Mission: Pinpossible: Gluten-free 4-ingredient peanut butter cookies as easy as advertised

I love it when a plan comes together. Why yes, yes I am channeling Hannibal Smith of “The A-Team” (shout-out to my dad, brother Tony and roommate Chuck on that one), but it’s just nice when something works out perfectly. Particularly a recipe that claims to contain the blueprint to a perfect no-fuss baking experience.

Spoiler alert, yummy cookies await!

Too often those “easy-to-follow,” “simple” recipes end up being deceptively difficult (cough, Brownie bites on steroids, cough).

But this marvelously manageable pin of four-ingredient peanut butter cookies was just as uncomplicated as advertised.

Peanut butter and sugar (2 of the 4 ingredients)

The pin links to a picture-heavy blog post on the PBS Parents site called Kitchen Explorers. It’s a kitchen-focused blog that has a distinctively family-friendly air, with tons of kid-approved and kid-focused recipes.

Ready for egg, vanilla (the other 2 ingredients)

This particular post is by Alice Currah who happens to also publish SavorySweetLife.com, a popular food blog that has an awesome array of categories so you can easily navigate the site to find blogs on topics like “Cake Decorating,” “Coffee Drinks,” “Beans and Legumes,” “Casseroles” and more.

But I digress, back to these awesomely easy peanut butter cookies.

Ingredients

1 cup peanut butter (can be smooth or crunchy)

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

I doubled the recipe

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Now that is some peanut-buttery cookie dough

2. Using a hand or stand mixer, mix the peanut butter, sugar, egg and vanilla on low speed until well combined.

Resist the urge to just pop one in your mouth

3. Using a medium cookie scoop, scoop about 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough 1 1/2-inches apart onto the baking sheet. If you don't have a cookie scoop, drop the dough with a spoon.

Criss-cross!

4. Flatten the dough balls the tines of a fork, making a cross pattern on the cookies.

So good!

5. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes until they are golden around the edges. Allow the cookies to rest on the counter for 2 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.

I'm virtually incapable of not crumbling at least one cookie,
but then again, it's a great excuse to eat one right away

How it went

This is so straightforward that even I couldn’t manage to muck it up even though I doubled the recipe.

I hand-mixed the ingredients, starting with the peanut butter (I used creamy) and sugar and adding the egg and vanilla after I already had a pretty even consistency.

I don’t have a cookie scoop so I just dropped the dough with a spoon, then delved in to leave that tell-tale crisscross pattern with a fork.

Yes, I have to eat this cookie right this second.

My cookies were perfect after 11 minutes, though a little crumbly even after the requisite two minutes on the cookie sheet. Just be careful when you’re using a spatula to transfer them to a cooling rack — or in my case a parchment lined tray — and you’ll be as golden as these cookies.

These cookies were very soft (though I’m sure if you prefer crunchy cookies baking them a little longer would do the trick) and delicious. They’re gluten-free and I honestly thought they were easier to make and tastier than traditional peanut-butter cookies with flour.