CHOCOLATE Peanut Butter Cookies! (2024)

FAQs

Why do you put fork marks in peanut butter cookies? ›

The baking company shared that the reason has to do with the consistency of the dough. Because peanut butter cookie dough is dense, using a fork helps flatten it into the ideal shape and thickness, allowing it to bake evenly.

If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

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.

If you're wanting to use natural (no sugar added) peanut butter, the cookies will be less sweet and they will likely spread out more. Using natural peanut butter will change the structure and texture of the cookies. Why are my cookies dry and crumbly? This is most likely a classic case of using too much flour.

Why You Need to Chill Your Cookie Dough. For starters, chilling prevents cookies from spreading out too quickly once they're in the oven. If you use a higher fat butter (like Kerrygold), chilling your dough is absolutely essential. Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool.

* BAKING & BUTTER BLEED: I like to bake my cookies the day before I decorate them - this cuts down on problems like "butter bleed" which is when the butter can leach into the royal icing and creates unsightly stains when dry.

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.

Peanut Butter Cookie Mix Hacks

Easy Add-Ins: After creating the dough according to the peanut butter cookie mix instructions, try introducing 1 cup of add-ins like REESE'S PIECES, toffee bits, dried fruits, mini marshmallows or even cooked bacon bits, if you're feeling adventurous!

To avoid this, try using as little flour as possible while preparing to roll your dough. Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

Firm dough prevents the cookies from spreading too much, which is why chilling the dough is a crucial step for cut-out and rolled cookies. "The colder and more solid the fat is, the less the cookie will spread," says food stylist and recipe developer Caitlin Haught Brown.

How can I make my cookies fluffier instead of flat? ›

Try using baking powder instead of baking soda. Baking soda encourages spreading while baking powder puffs the cookies up. If your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would use 3 to 4 teaspoons of baking powder. Caution: This could result in an unwanted flavor shift.

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.

These early recipes do not explain why the advice is given to use a fork, though. 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).

The moisture contributed by the milk will also increase spread and hydrate more of the starches in the flour. These hydrated (gelatinized) starches support the structure of the air pocket wall, keeping the cookies from collapsing once cooled. By holding more water, they also help keep the cookies softer over time.

Be A Mindful Measurer. Especially with sugar. Beyond providing sweet flavor, sugar is a key player in developing a crispy texture in your cookies. However, going overboard on the sweet stuff can promote fast and excessive caramelization, ultimately resulting in cookies with overly-darkened bottoms and edges.

Chilling the dough for a few hours will help the peanut butter cookies maintain their shape, and not overly spread when cooked. Dip the fork in sugar. To help keep the fork from sticking when you make a cross-hatch pattern on the cookies, dip the tines in a little granulated sugar between cookies.

If you don't flatten the cookies first, then the fork does double duty – it performs both functions. One very subtle result of creating the pattern is that the little tips of dough bake up crisper than the rest of the cookie, giving you both a bit of additional texture and deeper taste where the dough is more baked.

You can use a fork or a dough docker to prick small holes all over the surface of the dough. By venting the steam, docking keeps the dough from billowing or heaving as it bakes. It's an important step for crisp cookies or that are baked all in a single sheet and not cut up until they come out of the oven.

If all you have on hand is foil and you don't like thin and crispy cookies, try chilling your dough before baking to prevent excess spreading — or just skip the lining altogether and bake them on an ungreased sheet pan. A nonstick silicone cookie mat made the best cookies of all the tests I tried.