Peanut Butter-Sesame Cookies Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

Why do you put fork marks on peanut butter cookies? ›

So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.

Too much flour = crumbly cookies

If you don't want to measure by weight, try sifting your flour first and scooping flour into your measuring cup with a spoon, and don't pack it down into the cup. If all else fails, try reducing the amount of flour in the recipe by 10%.

Peanut Butter Cookie Mix Hacks

Flavor Twist: After creating the dough according to the peanut butter cookie mix instructions, portion the dough into balls then roll in a tasty topping like poppy seeds, sesame seeds or sprinkles, or go for a 4:1 ratio of sugar and dry spice, like ground cinnamon or nutmeg.

If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

"When your dough is refrigerated, the butter hardens. So when you bake them, they spread less and hold their shape better," adds Epperson. "Which means a better likelihood of a soft, chewy cookie in the center." Chilling the dough creates fluffier cookies with better consistency.

If you don't flatten the cookies first, then the fork does double duty – it performs both functions. One very subtle result of creating the pattern is that the little tips of dough bake up crisper than the rest of the cookie, giving you both a bit of additional texture and deeper taste where the dough is more baked.

Using too much baking soda or baking powder can really mess up a recipe, causing it to rise uncontrollably and taste terrible.

Peanut butter: Creamy peanut butter is ideal for this recipe because crunchy peanut butter creates an overly crumbly cookie. You can use processed peanut butter such as Jif or Skippy, or natural-style peanut butter.

You sure can. The good news is that butter, margarine, shortening and all types of oil can be used in place of the vegetable oil in SuperMoist package directions.

Yes, shortening yields chewier cookies than butter does, because butter contains water and shortening doesn't. But you can easily make up for butter's crisping tendencies by using crucial ingredient No. 3… Brown sugar instead of white sugar.

How can you tell when peanut butter cookies are done? ›

Unlike many other cookies, peanut butter biscuits only fully harden once they've been removed from the oven. Here's how to tell when peanut butter cookies are done: The tops of the cookies are a uniform light brown. They're soft to the touch but not moist or mushy.

The most common mistake with peanut butter cookies is using the wrong type of peanut butter. The BEST peanut butter for today's cookies is a processed creamy peanut butter, preferably Jif or Skippy.

Chilling the dough for a few hours will help the peanut butter cookies maintain their shape, and not overly spread when cooked. Dip the fork in sugar. To help keep the fork from sticking when you make a cross-hatch pattern on the cookies, dip the tines in a little granulated sugar between cookies.

So by poking the holes in, the cookie. will ensure that the cookie shape does not spread, which sugar cookies love to do. It also helps it stay nice and flat at the top.

This "dough" is a bit sticky, but grease your hands with some cooking spray to keep your "dough" from sticking to your hands. Once the cookies are ready to bake, you won't have tot wait long to enjoy them.

4) Chill that dough!

“When chilled cookies bake, the butter stays in a solid form longer, slowing the spread,” says Dawn.