Perfectly Simple Peanut Butter Cookies

Ever want to make a quick batch of cookies and you feel like there is just one ingredient that you don't have for any given recipe? Perhaps you are thinking chocolate chip cookies might be nice, but are out of chocolate chips. Or you want some sugar cookies, but don't have any (or enough...) butter. Well, today I wanted to make some cookies. I had no all-purpose flour (only whole wheat...which would make a dense cookie by itself), no oats, too little butter... You get the idea. Then the unexpected happened. I found a cookie recipe with only THREE ingredients! Did I have sugar? Yes! Did I have 1 egg? Yes! Did I have peanut butter? Yes!

So this recipe was inspired by one that I found on allrecipes.com. The website must have had 3 or 4 recipes just like this one. I tweaked it a bit, read reviewer comments, and tried it out. The results -- delectable. I will definitely be making these again. They are just too easy. (beware!)

Perfectly Simple Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

- 1 C peanut butter (natural works, just stir well!)

- 1/3 C packed brown sugar

- 1/3 C granulated sugar

- 1 egg

Now you can just use those above. However, based on what others have said I added the following...

- 1 tsp vanilla

- 1/2 tsp baking powder

- 3 Tbl white whole wheat flour

Note: Other variations include replacing 1/2 the peanut butter with almond butter. Those who did this really liked the cookie. I didn't have almond butter around, but if I did it would have certainly made it into the recipe. Almonds are thought to be quite a bit more healthy than peanuts -- so try it out!

Process:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Use an ice cream scoop or large spoon to create golf ball size cookies. Place them on a cookie sheet. Take a fork and make the tell tale criss-cross design on top pushing the peanut butter balls down slightly. Bake for 10 minutes. Let sit at least 5 minutes before removing from the cookie sheet. They will be crumbly if removed too soon.

Enjoy this delicious, easy, and relatively healthful dessert! (Just don't eat the whole batch.)