These craggy, deep-brown cookies are chewy and moist. Though they contain lots of peanut butter, as well as dry-roasted peanuts, they’re not overwhelmingly peanut-ty. Instead, the flavors of peanut and brown sugar meld into a smooth-tasting cookie that’ll be a hit with anyone partial to one of childhood’s favorite comfort foods.
Ingredients
Dough
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) brown sugar, light or dark, firmly packed
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons (1 3/8 ounces) dark corn syrup or brown sugar corn syrup
1/4 cup (2 ounces) water
1 cup (9 ounces) creamy peanut butter
1 1/2 cups (6 1/4 ounces) King Arthur whole wheat flour, Traditional or 100% White Whole Wheat
1/2 cup (2 1/4 ounces) lightly salted dry-roasted peanuts, finely ground in a food processor
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets.
To prepare the dough: In a medium-sized bowl, cream together the sugars, egg, vanilla, baking soda, salt, corn syrup, water, and peanut butter, beating until smooth. Add the flour and ground nuts, beating until the mixture is well combined. The dough will be very stiff, and quite dry; an electric stand mixer is the best bet here.
Drop tablespoon-size balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets; a tablespoon cookie scoop works well here. Press the top of each cookie with a mini-masher or fork to make parallel lines (or a crisscross design), flattening the cookies to about 1/3- to 1/2-inch thick. You can space these fairly close together; they won’t spread much.
To bake the cookies: Bake the cookies for 10 minutes, reversing the pans midway through (top to bottom, bottom to top). The cookies may look barely browned, or they may look almost exactly as they did when you put them in the oven; that’s OK. Remove them from the oven, and transfer them to a rack to cool.
