Peanut Butter Super Moreish Cookies

So my first recipe begins with an ingredient that I simply could not live without... Peanut Butter. Have it in a sandwich, have it in a cake, have it out the jar by the spoonful... it's a food that I adore! Last weekend at a vintage fair I visited, there was a beautiful cupcake stall selling all kinds of varieties of flavours... but I was instantly drawn to one of the lesser attractive cakes on the stand... the peanut butter and jelly cupcake. It was slathered in peanut butter icing, and crammed full of lovely strawberry jam, absolutely delicious! 

This is where my idea for my first recipe came about. I love cookies but often find them too sweet and sugary for my taste. Also, I prefer moist and chewy cookies, like the ones you buy at the supermarket bakery, but often find my bakes never turn out that way! Therefore I searched around for a recipe that I could use for some peanut butter cookies in the hope that the butter would make the cookies more moist while also adding a more nutty and less sugary taste.

             
                

And here is the end product. While I can admit they aren't the most aesthetically pleasing bake I've made, cookies are hard to make look pretty and part of me prefers them to be misshapen and clearly homemade! What the cookies most definitely lack for in look they definitely made up for in texture and taste, and I devoured two in the space of a couple of hours! They turned out moist and chewy just like I had wanted with a perfect peanut buttery taste, helped along by the addition of some peanut butter M&Ms. The recipe stated that it made 10, however, I like my peanut butter cookies LARGE, so got 6, but you could easily make up to 20 little ones if you wanted. The recipe I got from British Bake off's Jo Wheatley and her lovely cookbook, 'A passion for Baking'. Her recipe states you can add chocolate chips or peanuts to the cookie mix but I decided to add peanut butter M&Ms for a change but you can add whatever you like! If you have as much love for peanut butter as me, these are a must, I assure you you won't be disappointed!

100g Softened Unsalted Butter 

100g Peanut Butter (I used crunchy but you can use smooth)

60g Demerera Sugar

60g Caster Sugar

1 Large Egg, Beaten

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 Bicarbonate of Soda

100g Plain Flour

100g Peanut Butter M&Ms

Preheat oven to 180C and cream the butter, two sugars and peanut butter together until thoroughly mixed and light and fluffy. 

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder into the mixture and mix until the dough comes together. At this stage, add the M&M's or peanuts or whatever you fancy. 

Scoop balls of the mixture onto a lined baking tray, ensuring they are well spaced out so that they don't merge into one great big cookie. (has happened to me before!) 

If you like your cookies flattened like mine, give them a little flattening with a fork. Orelse place in the middle of the oven for 5 minutes, then bring the cookies out, give the tray a bang on the work surface to deflate the cookies, then return to the oven for a further 5 minutes until they are a golden brown colour. 

Cool in the tray to allow them to firm up a little before placing on a wire rack to cool completely.

:)