Peanut Butter Crinkles

Peanut Butter is something I have loved since I was a toddler. My earliest memory of peanut butter is this large glass jar of Kraft peanut butter that my paternal uncle and his wife had brought for me from Canada. My mother treasured that glass jar for years until it finally broke when I was in my teens. In fact, my love of peanut butter was so well known in the family that my aunt (the same one who sent that glass jar of Kraft) sent me a jar of Kraft peanut butter among all the lovely gifts she sent me for my wedding :)

I have been so caught up with work and with painting that I've hardly baked anything in recent months. But I've been yearning to! We out at a friend's house for dinner last night as we talked about different foods and favourites, the famous Shrewsbury biscuits of Kayani Bakery in Pune were mentioned. The hubby and I exchanged glances and without saying a word we knew that I'd be baking Shortbread today. Buttery, salty and not too sweet, these melt in the mouth morsels are ridiculously easy to make and they are simply divine.

I dug out my tomes of cookie recipes. If I was going to make cookies I wanted to make many, even some new kinds. The peanut butter crinkles are very easy to make and are just heavenly. Since I had all the required ingredients at hand I decided to make them too.

The recipe is from The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits published by the Australian Women's Weekly. I have tweaked it a bit, of course ;)

Peanut Butter Crinkles

125gms butter. I used Amul
1tsp Vanilla
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup peanut butter
1 and 1/4 cup plain flour

Take a large clean mixing bowl. Cream the butter with all the remaining ingredients barring the flour.Sift the flour on a sheet of paper or in another bowl.Tip it into the creamed butter sugar mixture and mix well with a wooden spoon to form a firm dough. if you find the dough is soft add a little flour and knead very lightly to make it firmer.

Shape the dough into walnut sized balls and place onto your cookie sheet. press down with a fork and mark a rough criss-cross pattern on the tops and flatten the cookies out a little. Don't press very hard, just spread the cookies a bit.

Bake for 15 mins in a preheated oven at 180C. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Make yourself a mug of coffee, grab a pile of these cookies, curl up in a cozy corner with a good book and enjoy these peanut butter crinkles. The hubby went a step further- he slathered a cookie with raspberry jam and stuck another cookie on to it to make a PBJ cookie sandwich!

They're so easy to make I'm sure I'll be making them again really soon.