The Best Proportions for Perfect Peanut Butter Cookies
All baking recipes rely on precise ingredient ratios, but peanut butter cookies are especially sensitive to changes in the proportion of the namesake ingredient. That’s because peanut butter contains both fat and protein (plus starch), and altering the amounts of those components can dramatically affect both flavor and texture. Case in point: Changing the ratios of peanut butter to butter and flour made the difference between cookies that were barely nutty and ones that had robust nuttiness and also the difference between cookies that were doughy and dry and ones that were so structureless they crumbled to a sticky paste. Here’s how we arrived at the ideal proportions for nutty, chewy cookies. (See “How Fat Affects Chewiness” to learn why the right ratio of different types of fat also matters.)
Producing a cookie or brownie with a chewy texture depends on a number of factors, and fat is a very important one. We’ve found that when combined in a ratio of 30 percent saturated to 70 percent unsaturated fat in a dough or batter, it can aid in creating a chewy texture for a cookie so bendable you can even drape it over a rolling pin (below left). Traditional recipes do not follow this ratio, creating a crunchier texture, for a cookie that easily crumbles apart (below right).
The practice of creating a crosshatch pattern on peanut butter cookies with the tines of a fork appears to have begun with a recipe published in the July 1, 1932 edition of the Schenectady Gazette, which instructed bakers to “press [dough] down with a fork, first one way, then the other, so they look like squares on waffles.”
A year later, Balanced Recipes, a cookbook published by Pillsbury Flour Mills, also called for flattening the cookies with a fork—but in only one direction.
In 1938, when The Settlement Cookbook specified a crosshatch for its peanut butter cookies, as the Gazette had, the method took off.
But why a crosshatch in the first place? Since peanut butter cookie dough is generally dense and doesn’t spread well, the cookies need to be flattened in order to bake evenly, and a fork is the perfect tool for the job. Because the dough for our Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies is softer and spreads more than traditional peanut butter cookie dough, we don’t need a crosshatch. (And don’t be tempted to add one for decorative purposes; the dough’s softness also means that it won’t hold a sharply defined pattern.)
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