In these uncertain and stressful times, cooking is helpful. It keeps you busy inside and gives you delicious things to eat. We were already cooking most of our food from scratch but have extended that habit to treats like biscuits and cake. It keeps us out of trouble and off the streets. (As does the very large paper moose head I’m building. I foresee jigsaws coming out this weekend.) I work from home and these peanut butter biscuits have become my favourite elevenses snack.
When I put dollops of mixture on baking sheets, I wasn’t sure what would come out. These have perfect shape, texture and flavour.
In an economy drive, we’d bought cheap peanut butter and found we really didn’t like it. The huge jar of butter was glaring at me from the shelf so I decided to find a recipe to use it in. I found this vegan peanut butter cookies recipe from Happy Baker: it was exactly what I was looking for.
I made some tweaks to use what we had in the cupboard: instead of plain flour I used strong wholewheat (there’s not enough stirring or working in the recipe to develop the gluten, so it works fine); instead of olive oil I used almond oil which has a neutral flavour; instead of granulated sugar I used caster; instead of smooth peanut butter I used crunchy. Hurrah for a flexible recipe that means I can use what I have and avoid shopping.
It comes together quickly: mix some dry ingredients in one bowl, the wet in another, then bring the two together. The resulting mixture is somewhere between a batter and a dough: very soft and thus not suitable for rolling or cooling and slicing. The biscuits are lovely: peanutty, not too sweet, crunchy. Exceptionally moreish.
Crunchy, peanutty: the perfect peanut butter biscuit?
It’s an American recipe so the measurements are based on volume (cups) not weight. Christopher made these biscuits unaware that we had cup measures and used Google to convert between cups and grams. It produced a wider-spreading, glassy biscuit which tasted fine but didn’t have the nice texture (or look) of the original. My advice is to stay true to the original measurements. If it helps, here are the milliliter equivalents:
- 1 cup: 250 mls
- 0.75 cup: 188 mls (=180 mls + 1.5 tsp)
- 0.5 cup: 125 mls
- 0.25 cup: 62.5 mls (= 60 mls + 0.5 tsp)
- 0.75 cup + 1 tsp wholemeal flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- Pinch of salt
- 1 tsp corn flour
- 0.25 cup neutral oil (I use almond)
- 0.5 cup brown sugar
- 0.5 cup caster sugar
- 0.25 cup milk (I use soya)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 0.75 cup peanut butter (I use the cheapest, crunchy I can find)
- Preheat the oven to 160C.
- Prepare two baking sheets with greaseproof paper and set aside.
- In a bowl, mix the flour, bicarb, and salt.
- In larger bowl, whisk together oil, sugars, milk, vanilla and peanut butter until smooth.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet and combine thoroughly/
- Using two tablespoons, scoop the mixture out onto the baking sheets.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes. The biscuits should be golden, the edges just darkening.
- Let rest for 10 minutes before serving (and before trying to move from the baking sheet: they're hot).
What’s your favourite elevenses biscuit or stay-at-home bake?
