Mom's Peanut Butter Cookies

The fork-marks on peanut butter cookies go back more than eighty years, and for good reason. Pressing the tines of a fork into each cookie ensures this dense dough will flatten out and bake evenly.

FMM: I replaced 1/2 cup of flour with 1/2 cup whole wheat flour. Cookies tasted great, and I don't know if I would have noticed the difference. I also spinkled a little flaxseed on top of a couple of them. I was not as fond of this. The flavor of the flaxseeds didn't seem to go with the sweetness of the cookies. I do like flaxseed in rice cakes which are spread with cream cheese, so they do go well with savory baked goods and at least cream cheese.

Try cutting back on the sugar next time, and/or use no sugar added peanut butter.

1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup margarine [or butter]
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour [use 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour]
1 tsp salt
1 tsp. baking soda

Cream the sugars, margarine, and peanut butter together. Add the eggs and vanilla, then flour, salt, and baking soda. Stir until all is incorporated. Chill the dough. {Chilling the dough makes it easier to roll the cookies into balls.]

Roll into 1" balls and placed on an ungreased cookie sheet. Press down with a fork in one direction, then the other, creating a crisscross pattern with the tines of the fork.

[To keep the dough from sticking to the fork, dip the fork in water and tap it on the side of the water container to remove as much water as possible. Use the fork to make the pattern. The dough will no longer stick. After pressing the fork on two or three cookies, dip the fork again.]

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 - 12 min. Do not over bake. Take them out of the oven as soon as they no longer look wet or raw. [I like to bake mine until they are just starting to get brown. 12 - 14 minutes in my oven. Cool on the baking sheet for a minute or two to allow the cookies to stiffened up a bit before moving to the cooling rack.]

Cool on a wire rack and store in a covered container.

Yield: 30 cookies [I get 4 dozen using my cookie scoop. The next time I made them, I scooped the dough so it was fairly well rounded in the scoop and got 36, 1 of which was quite large.]