One of my beloved TikTok creators, B. Dylan Hollis, not long ago posted this video clip recipe for “Magic Peanut Butter Cookies,” which have only 3 elements: a person cup of peanut butter, one particular egg, and a 50 % cup of sugar. I sent the url to my mate who is as well great to have the clock application.
“How really validating for your cookie recipe,” she shot back again, not at all condescendingly.
Recipe for 3-ingredient cookies
The recipe she was referring to is not mine at all but relatively this just one, which is slightly distinct from the Hollis recipe in that it works by using 1 cup each of sugar and peanut butter and continue to just 1 egg. It’s a most loved amid thoroughly clean eaters and gluten- or dairy-sensitive folks. You can use any nut or seed butter in place of peanut butter, producing it also a beloved among the daycare dad or mum set. At the time I created a batch of these cookies with the approximately sinless SunButter and served them at a playdate with combined success among the picky toddlers.
Here’s how it operates: You combine with each other the three straightforward substances (nut butter + sugar + egg), roll into balls, plop them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (I use a cookie scoop for uniformity, but you can skip it), and then crisscross them with a fork like any traditional peanut butter cookie. I bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or so, but in excess of at Lifehacker Reduce prefers to hold them un-crisscrossed and bake them at 375 in “blob” kind. Each and every oven can be a little bit distinct, so do watch them just after about eight minutes to make confident they’re not having also brown.
Hollis was sort more than enough to electronic mail me about why he chose to include this recipe in his repertoire of typically midcentury experimentations. He said he did not think this recipe would “work” and that the “sight of a melted sheet of peanut butter would be comical to the viewers.”
Whilst most peanut butter cookie recipes have a ratio of two parts flour to a single portion peanut butter, this one particular “works,” Hollis states, since of the modern emulsifiers in industrial peanut butter, which indicates these cookies hold their shape properly. They are densely, richly nutty and not as well crumbly. They maintain nicely and even travel quite effectively.
Versions on a concept
I have been building these cookies for decades. I usually sneak in a splash of a not-pretty-exotic fourth ingredient: vanilla extract. No matter if you use non-recalled Jif, another creamy, emulsified peanut butter, or a a lot more pure peanut butter, you can incorporate some flakey salt on prime for a sweet and savory flavor blend.
Hollis is confident the normal oils in other nut butters would direct to the melty catastrophe he was hoping for in his video clip. But in simple fact, I have had results with all-natural nut butter models like Adams—leading me to marvel how “natural” they definitely are. Decreased mentions in the Lifehacker recipe that she chills dough when employing all-natural nut butters to avert spreading.
My favorite matter to do, particularly all around the vacations when I do a good deal of baking and share with buddies, is invest in a couple of “fancy” nut butters and make the recipe from those. There are flavored peanut butters, like pumpkin spice close to the vacations, but also hazelnut and cashew butters that have genuinely appealing flavors. For my youngster who will not consume just about anything for dessert that isn’t chocolate, I can throw in some cocoa powder or use one of those people chocolatized nut butters.
Regardless of whether you opt for to use the half or entire cup of sugar is a make a difference of flavor and viewers. Hollis guesses it is an Americanization, considering the fact that the Canadian KRAFT brand peanut butter packaging nevertheless has the recipe with the half cup iteration.
“People love even-ratio recipes,” Hollis suggests. Where’s the lie?
Given that plenty of people today in my existence have nutritional limitations, getting a go-to recipe that can be the two gluten-totally free and dairy-free is a substantial get. But the bigger get is obtaining this brief, quick, 3-component cookie recipe on hand that needs no imagining, only wants 10 minutes in the oven, and genuinely is improved than the more challenging ones in my recipe guides.