These cookies came together because of meat. My pal Susie Wyshak brought a batch of these beauties (minus one ingredient) to a Meat Club meet-up (ha! punny!). What is meat club? The first rule of Meat Club is that you never talk about Meat Club… OK, you twisted my arm. A bunch of food nerds (Sean Timberlake, Dana Velden, Irvin Lin, Jeanne Brophy, Carrie Sullivan, and others) get together periodically to grind, stuff, or otherwise fuss over some sort of meat-based project.
But cookies! We’re talking about cookies. Susie brought these to the nibbling portion of our evening and I was surprised at how adorable and delicious they were. Her original omits the flour, which is totally fine if you’re doing the vegan thing. Note, however, that without the flour the cookies are very delicate, and they must be made quite small, else they’ll crumble. With flour, they are lunchbox-sturdy.
Keep this one in your back pocket. The cookies are super, duper, SCHMOOPER easy; this is a great one to do with kids.
SIX INGREDIENT COOKIES
Time: About 30 minutes. Yield: About 3 1/2 dozen cookies.
- 1 cup brown sugar (if you’re out, use 1 cup of white sugar with 1 tablespoon of blackstrap molasses)
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt (or half of that if you don’t want to taste the salt)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup peanut butter (any style)
- 1 egg, slightly beaten
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with a slipmat or parchment paper. Arrange the oven rack in the middle of the oven.
In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder with a fork. Stir in the peanut butter and the egg, but note that the batter will be so thick you may want to just switch to mixing it with your hands.
Pull off a smallish, rounded tablespoon of dough. Roll it into a ball between your hands and press it into a flattened disc about 1/2-inch thick. (Note that I like my cookies on the smaller side, but the important thing is that the cookies are all about the same size and thickness for even baking.) Shape the remainder of the cookies and place them on the baking sheet. Note that they will not spread much during baking, but the cookies shouldn’t touch.
Bake for 12-17 minutes, or until the cookies are just brown on top and slightly darker on the bottom. They taste much better once completely cool.
Variations: Before rolling out the dough, feel free to add in chocolate chips, coconut, crushed pretzels or potato chips, cacao nibs or nuts, or whatever else you like in your cookies.
