Happy November! I’ve really gotten into the swing of Christmas baking (albeit a smidgen early I know), and after about 7 batches of recipe experimentation I’m ready to share the perfect, keep-its-shape, slightly crispy, peanut buttery goodness cut-out cookie recipe.
A little twist on the usual holiday cut-out cookie, they pair nicely with vanilla royal icing and are ideal for decorating and gifting (Not to mention just snacking!).
Chocolate royal icing on top would bring these cookies to another whole level don’t you think? I will be sharing my recipe with you soon (it needs a little more tweaking), and my go-toroyal icing recipewas perfect for the white snowmen I had a hankering to make. UPDATE – Chocolate royal icing recipe HERE.
The key to these cookies keeping their shape lies not only in the combination of ingredients (exact measurement in baking is important) and omission of the leavening agent (i.e. baking powder), but in some crucial points in the process. You can find a whole post dedicated to cookies keeping their shape here, but I’ll share a quick summary with you as well.
Use the best quality butter you can find (unfortunately usually the most expensive). Higher quality butter has less water content, and therefore spreads less during baking. When creaming your butter and sugars, mix only until just incorporated. Traditionally, creaming the butter and sugar means whipping it until it becomes light and fluffy, but doing this will incorporate too much air for this cut-out cookie… perfect for cakes and cupcakes though. Also chill your cookie shapes to almost the frozen point (even frozen works if you have the time) before baking.
Taste-wise, my favorite peanut butter, and the one I love with this recipe, is definitely SKIPPYpeanut butter. I used the SKIPPY Smooth brand for these ones, but have also used the Natural – either is delicious. Although this post is sponsored by SKIPPY Peanut Butter, all opinions are my own.
SKIPPY Peanut Butter Cookie Bites
Pop these bite-sized cookies into your mouth into these jars and share as a sweet holiday treat!Of course the size of cookies you make will depend on what jar you put them in, but about 12 of these cookies fit snugly into each of these 16 oz jars.
As for the snowmen and penguin cookie shapes themselves, I used two circle cutters to create a miniature snowman and penguin of sorts.
The larger circle is approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter and the smaller one, about 1/2 an inch (1.3 cm) in diameter.
For every color of icing except for the scarf, I used a #1.5 piping tip. For the scarf I used a #2.5. Decorating these guys is easy and great for beginners! A close up of the penguin might be helpful too. (Update: I’ve created a how-to video on decoratingthese here).
These cookies will be frozen to keep them as fresh as possible for Christmas time. Find a post on freezing cookieshere.
On low speed, mix peanut butter, butter and both sugars in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, until incorporated.
On low speed, add eggs and vanilla and mix until just combined.
Sift salt and flour together and add to the mixture, stirring on low speed. (Tip - Before you mix, cover your bowl losely with a large tea towel, ensuring the tea towel does not get pulled into the machine, to trap the flour inside and prevent spilling). Mix until the dough collects around the paddle attachment.
Roll your dough between two sheets of parchment paper and chill in the fridge for at least one hour. For a post on cookie thickness, seehere.
Cut your cookie shapes out and re-roll as needed. Note that shapes which are re-rolled tend not to keep their shape as well, even if you follow all the correct steps. Keep your cookie shapes with most detail for the first round of cutting.
Place cookie shapes at least 1/2 an inch or 1 cm apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Place tray(s) of cookies in a fridge or freezer until thoroughly chilled; at least one hour.
Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 8-12 minutes. Larger shapes will need more time and smaller shapes less. Look for slightly golden brown edges.
Once cookies have cooled, decorate as desired!
Notes
Yield:Approx. 30 cookies (depending on size and shape)
The dough can hang out in the freezer for weeks; when you're ready to bake your cookies, remove as many sheets of dough from the freezer as you'd like, let the dough stand at room temperature for five minutes, then use your favorite cutters to stamp out cookies; they'll be easy to cut, will hold their shape, and won't ...
You do not have to chill this peanut butter cookie dough for perfectly thick cookies that are full of peanut buttery flavor. You can chill the dough for up to 72 hours if you prefer. Chilling cookie dough is very similar to marinating meat – things just get so much better if you wait a day or two.
Your other source of fat should be butter, not shortening. Butter will make your cookies taste buttery; shortening will make them taste suspiciously vacant, like Katy Perry's voice post-autotune. Yes, shortening yields chewier cookies than butter does, because butter contains water and shortening doesn't.
If you still notice that your cookies are spreading, another thing you can do to help cookies keep their shape, is increase the heat 10-25 degrees higher than the suggested temperature on the recipe. Every oven is different, so you may need to try this for yours.
Use a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Coating your baking sheet with nonstick spray or butter creates an overly greasy foundation, causing the cookies to spread. I always recommend a silicone baking mat because they grip onto the bottom of your cookie dough, preventing the cookies from spreading too much.
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.
Certain cookies — Sugar Cookies, Snickerdoodles, Classic Peanut Butter Cookies — need to be flattened a bit before they bake, lest they end up emerging from the oven looking like ping-pong balls rather than typical flat, round cookies.
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.
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.
Cook's Illustrated recommends baking peanut butter cookies with products from traditionally creamy brands like, you guessed it, Skippy or Jif. Such butters have smooth, consistent textures that easily combine with any cookie dough.
If you incorporate too much milk, eggs, or another liquid, you can add a proportionate amount of the dry ingredients to the cookie dough to account for the excess liquid. Chill the dough. If the butter became too soft during the mixing process, it can sometimes result in a thin cookie dough.
The butter cookie provides better flavor and a crispier exterior with browning around edges and a chewy interior; the shortening cookie spreads less, holding its shape better while baking.
The reason is that peanut butter cookie dough is dense, and unpressed, each cookie will not cook evenly. Using a fork to press the dough is a convenience of tool; bakers can also use a cookie shovel (spatula).
Q: Why are my cookies so thin and flat? The butter or dough was too warm. Butter should be at room temperature (unless otherwise noted). If the dough seems too soft, chill it for 10 to 15 minutes before baking.
A standard drinking glass with about a 3-inch opening is a great stand-in for cookie cutters. Round cookies can be decorated in a variety of ways to add festive color to any cookie tray.
If you describe something as having a cookie-cutter approach or style, you mean that the same approach or style is always used and not enough attention is paid to individual differences. Too many cookie-cutter condos were built with no attention to consumer needs.
To make precise and accurate cuts, insert three toothpicks, evenly spaced, along all four sides of the cooled bars. Cut diagonally across the bars beginning in one corner—the lower left corner is an easy place to make your first cut—and cutting from one toothpick to the next closest on the perpendicular side.
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. For the scarf I used a 
