Get your hands dirty in the best way

Give these criss-cross peanut butter cookies a try

BY BONNIE AMBROSI PHOTOS BY EMMA AMBROSI

There’s something fundamentally joyful about making cookies — even more so when kids are involved. This recipe for peanut butter cookies is particularly kid-friendly. Little hands can help form the dough into balls, roll them in sugar, and make the traditional criss-cross pattern on each one by pressing the tines of a fork into the soft dough. It’s fun and not too messy.

If members of your family have peanut allergies, this recipe works with almond butter or other unsweetened nut butter. Sunflower seed butter is typically sweetened, so if you use that in place of the peanut butter, just cut back a bit on the sugar.

As it is, I admit, these cookies are sweet! I have a tendency to make my baked goods so healthful that they sometimes cease to be treats. This has sometimes resulted in disappointment — for example, when something that looks like a brownie just tastes like bread. So in this case, I have resisted the temptation to use less sugar. They are cookies, after all — not intended to be the foundation of your child’s diet.

I do use whole grain flour, which has never presented a problem. I don’t recommend using whole wheat bread flour — it’s too coarse. Whole wheat pastry flour (made from a different kind of wheat) or whole grain spelt flour are my go-tos.

The size of the cookies is up to you. If you roll the dough into balls about 1½ inches in diameter, you’ll end up with about two dozen. But you can make six enormous cookies covered with fork marks if you prefer! They don’t spread out as they bake, so you can put them close together on the cookie sheet. These cookies are soft when they first come out of the oven, but they crisp up nicely as they cool.

And, as I always remind you, none of the ingredients is as important as the love and happiness that you bring to the process. That is what truly nourishes your children. —

MDT

Bonnie Ambrosi lives in Duluth and is an organizer of The Vegan Cookbook Club which meets at 11:30 a.m. on the first Thursday of every month at Mount Royal Branch Library. Contact Ambrosi at bonnieambrosi@gmail.com.

Criss-Cross Peanut Butter Cookies

Makes 2 dozen medium sized cookies

½ cup softened Earth Balance

Buttery Spread

½ cup sugar

½ cup brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla

½ cup unsweetened peanut butter or other nut butter

1¼ cups flour (I use whole wheat pastry or spelt flour)

¾ tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Cream together the softened Earth Balance, sugars, vanilla and peanut butter.

Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then add the peanut butter-sugar mixture.

Roll dough into balls and place on an ungreased or parchment paper-lined baking sheet. If you make the balls about 1½-inch in diameter, you’ll get 24 cookies.

Use a fork to make a criss-cross pattern on top of each cookie. To keep the fork from sticking, dip it in the extra sugar between criss- crosses.

Bake for 10 minutes.

Let the cookies cool before moving them or else they will break. If you use parchment paper, you can carefully lift the entire sheet of paper — cookies and all — onto a cooling rack, so you can use the baking sheet again right away.

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