Chewy peanut butter cookies with crispy edges? Yes please! These easy peanut butter crinkles are perfect for lunch boxes and they ship well overseas, too.
Turbinado or granulated sugar for sugaring cookies
Instructions
Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl until combined.
Beat together peanut butter, butter, and brown sugar until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes on medium high.
Add egg and molasses, beating until combined.
Reduce speed to low, then mix in flour mixture until combined.
Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 375°F.
Roll 1 heaping teaspoon of dough into a 1-inch ball with wet hands.
Roll ball in sugar or turbinado sugar to cover.
Arrange 2-inches apart on a baking sheet covered with silpat or parchment paper.
Bake cookies undersides are golden brown and tops "crackle", 10 to 12 minutes total.
Cool on cookie sheets 5 minutes.
Transfer to racks to cool completely.
Notes
Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.Freeze unbaked dough balls for up to 3 months - just put them on a cookie sheet and put in the freezer until frozen solid. Add to freezer bags so that you can remove as many as needed and bake. Baked cookies also freeze well.Here are some tips for making these peanut butter crinkle cookies and getting the exact texture you're looking for.
As they bake deep cracks form and the outside gets a crispy coating from the sugar. The inside stays soft and chewy but if you like crisper cookies leave them in the oven an extra minute or two. 10 minutes for very chewy cookies, 12 for average, and 14 for crisp cookies is about right.
This dough is firm enough that your children and grandchildren can help roll the cookie dough into balls and dip them into the sugar.
Use a larger sugar crystals like turbinado sugar or white decorative sugar to roll the dough in. You can use regular granulated sugar, too. It's just that the texture is much nicer when you roll the dough in the larger crystals.
Be sure to use unsulfured molasses like Grandma's Molasses. Blackstrap molasses and the like are not what you want in this recipe!
If you like crisper cookies bake them a little longer.
Let the cookies cool and set on the pan before you try to move them. At least 10 minutes.
The dough freezes well. Make the dough balls and flash freeze them right on the cookie sheet. Once they are frozen dump them in a freezer bag. When you are ready to bake just put however many frozen cookie dough balls you want on a baking sheet and bake as usual.
These travel extremely well and are good for shipping to loved ones in college and in the military.
Make the balls bigger and use them for the sandwich part of an ice cream sandwich. Yum!