Category: Recipe

It is a truth universally acknowledged that peanut butter is a quintessentially American food. Isn’t it amazing how those “universal truths” are often utterly wrong? The Aztecs were actually the first to mess about with peanut-mashing, creating a paste that was a proto-peanut butter. Of course, George Washington Carver, an early food scientist, came up with three hundred uses for the humble legume between 1891 and 1927. In 1884 Marcellus Gilmore Edson – a Canadian – patented a peanut paste made from dry roasted peanuts. His work overlaps with the work of John Harvey Kellogg, whose 1895 pureé from raw peanuts was touted as a protein substitute for those without teeth (eek). In 1903 the first grinder for the specific use of grinding peanuts into peanut butter was patented, and the first recorded recipe for peanut butter cookies was in 1916. So far, not specifically American at all. Interestingly enough, the first time the traditional hash-marks appeared on top of the cookies was in a Pillsbury cookbook in 1936.. No explanation was given, so bakers assume it was to flatten them to allow them more thoroughly; others point out that it allowed allergy-sufferers to identify the peanut butter ingredient. (Nerdy “The More You Know!” history lesson sourced via About.com, TIME magazine’s brief history of peanut butter, and The National Peanut Board.)

According to the statistics people, America is the third largest peanut producer worldwide (hi Texas and Georgia!) and Americans eat around 700 million pounds of peanut butter per year (about 3 pounds per person). While we know that no one who reads this blog is by any means average, that does speak to a people who love their peanut butter – and their peanut butter cookies.

Typically, until recently, T. absolutely hated them.

The biggest complaint most people have about peanut butter cookies is that they’re not a low calorie food. T’s complaint? That peanut butter cookies are usually massively, ridiculously too-too-too sweet. D. posits that the sweeter the better, but T. insists that peanut butter cookies are supposed to taste of peanuts, not sugar. The argument came to its usual standstill when T. whipped up a batch of pbj cookies with… almond flour. Just to throw things off completely.

Almondy PB&C’s

Prep a cookie sheet, we used greaseproof paper. REHEAT your oven, 350F°/170°C

• 2 C blanched almond flour
• 1/2 C. natural peanut butter, in this case, crunchy
• 1/4 C. Truvia or 2/4 C. agave
• 1/4 Tbsp. vanilla extract
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 large egg or 1/4 C. ground flax, plus 3 Tbsp. water for egg replacement

Peanut butter cookies are simple enough to bring together – cream together your salt, sugar, your fats and your egg, at the last, add the flour and prepare for something ridiculously sticky. It took less than half an hour to roll the dough into simple balls. D. suggested that, since he didn’t want not-very-sweet peanut butter cookies that chocolate might as well be involved, since he doesn’t really like it. Lindt 85% was made into a quick ganache and used in place of the traditional jam thumbprint. Honestly, that was a mistake. Actually, there were a few mistakes:

What We Did Wrong

• We forgot to spray PAM on the greaseproof paper. Yes. It’s greaseproof, but the cookies will still stick slightly if they’re not entirely cooled
• We forgot to let the cookies entirely cool. ANYTHING made with almond flour MUST be allowed to cool quite a bit; it’s tender and delicate
• We should have used a Silpat or something like it. It’s easy to get very brown bottoms to your foods when using sugar subs; Silpat helps it cook easily, cool quickly, and look better
• We should have mixed sugars. Truvia is already made up of stevia and erythritol; in our quest to avoid weird aftertastes or the “cleansing” side effect of using many sugar alcohols, we’ve avoided Splenda. A tiny bit of Splenda? Is workable. A couple of tablespoons might have been helpful here, as it seemed to D. like the cookies got less sweet as time went on, and the peanut butter flavor took over.

What We Did Right:

1. We tried.

The list on the positives here might seem pretty short — it’s not. The attempt is A Big Deal. A lot of people, when faced with a necessary change in a diet, just… can’t. New, weird ingredients with strange names and unpredictable outcomes are really enough to make a person discouraged. It’s easier, in many ways, to retreat to “okay” foods, and try to stick with old favorites, than venture out into something new. Food blogger friends have urged us to get back in the game, but we’ve kind of become the worst kinds of food bloggers, the kinds who don’t blog about food. It’s because, to be blunt, there are a LOT of mistakes in the kitchen these days. Tons. We dump out baked items, bowls of batter, and we kind of hate ourselves just a little each time for the waste. But, waste and flops is how we fuel creation.

The verdict is that this is one tender, tasty and delicious piece of cookie. The chocolate was weird – it lost its temper and became really oddly crumbly – but with a dollop of low sugar Smucker’s, these will be a completely yummy compliment to a mug of Assam tea, or even a glass of milk. The almond flour makes these cookies more tender than the traditional peanut butter cookie, and they don’t have the sandy/shortbready feel of some recipes. (Have you ever had a gritty peanut butter cookie? T. has. It bewildered her.) T. feels this tenderness is an improvement. D. remains ambivalent.

As the days continue to cool and baked goods seem like a better and better idea (along with turning on the furnace – which we’re delaying until October, if we can), we’re going to keep messing with these recipes, working to see what we can do with them, and continue to try and perfect the tender, spongy scone – with just a tiny bit of fresh cranberry and orange zing (that was a success!), fine-tune our carrot cake muffins (still needs work) and present you with some new things to try – mainly because of sheer cussed stubbornness, but also because we love to tinker, and we’ve never met a recipe we couldn’t make better. (Or, our version of better, anyway.)

Cheers, and happy autumn!

People have their misty, water-colored food nostalgia; our Uncle Phil talked frequently about the cakes of his childhood, thus we ended up seeking out dusty bottles of rum, jars of scary-red maraschino cherries, and having myriad cans of pineapple (and we haven’t yet tested the theory that it’s better with fresh) on hand at all times, lest an upside-down mood should strike. Uncle Phil has been gone awhile now, but every once in awhile, we get the urge to upside-down something. Something red, yes, but not artificially so. And we did without the rum. Just a quick trip to the freezer netted us the ingredients for Cardamom-Cranberry Upside-Down Cake.

This was a traditional mishmash of two recipes – one from Kraft, and a borrow from our own brains, not surprisingly. Kraft recipes seem to fear the inclusion of, actual spices, so you know we had to add cardamom. We state the recipe we began with, and include what actually happened during the baking process… The word “whatever” is used a great deal (which probably drives our friend Lorne UP A TREE, but it is what it is, dear friend. You like us anyway, right?) Consistency in a cake of this kind comes from creaming the butter and sugar, not about the weight of the flour. It’s an upside down cake – don’t expect a high-rising bundt, because that’s just not how this cake goes. Okay?

Sleepy, sloe-eyed cardamom pairs beautifully with the piquant burst of wakeful zest that is cranberry, and their happy do-si-do begins in a saucepan, where the tartness is caramelized with lovely brown sugar. Who cares that we used berries that had been in the freezer since Thanksgiving? It’s fine to eat seasonally in terms of shopping, but yay for freezers and dragging out the typical flavors of fall. Plus, since it’s nearly eleven on a fine May morning and it’s a whopping 56°F/13°C, it feels autumnal in the shade, anyway (what IS this wind???).

Cardamom & Cranberry, Upside Down

Preheat oven to 350°F or 175°C

• 1/2 C margarine or butter PLUS 1/3 cup of margarine or butter
• 1 C brown sugar, well packed, PLUS one half cup
• 4 eggs, Flax or Chicken – we used flax*
• 4 Tbsp grated orange zest – we used about 7, but the Heavy-Handed With Spices among us do that
• 7 Tbsp OJ – we used Odwalla tangerine, because that’s what was in the fridge
• 1 Ground Cardamom pod – green hull, black inside bits, and all, We use a coffee grinder. No whole pod? Use 1/2 tsp.
• 2 C Whole Wheat AP flour. Or, just AP flour. Or, just whole wheat. Or, cake flour. Whatever
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1.5 C cranberries, fresh or frozen, whole or chopped

1. If you’re using Flax Eggs, make them first. Much of the time we just grind our flax seeds, mix them with the required water, and just dump them into the cake with the wet ingredients. Non-dairy foodies probably grind their teeth, but remember that word “whatever?” Um, yeah. Here’s the right way to do Flax Eggs: The ratio is 1 Tbsp of ground flax to 3 Tbsp of water = 1 egg. Make up your eggs in a small bowl, and let them sit, covered, in the fridge for about fifteen minutes until you’re ready to add them. This allows the flax to absorb the water, appropriately thicken and get goopy, and better imitate the chicken egg effect you’re after, in terms of binding and raising. Or, you can be a heathen like us, and just dump them in – but foodies do say this way is better. Up to you.
2. Next, line the bottom of your springform pan with parchment, and give it a quick spray of some sort of cake release – PAM or otherwise. And yes, this may cause mild swearing and gnashing of teeth. We put the metal circle on the paper and trim it after we get the spring tightened. Because it’s just too annoying the nine other ways we tried it.



3. FINALLY, you can get to the easy bit – the cooking. In a small saucepan, bring together 1/2 C margarine, 2 Tbsp orange juice and 1/2 c brown sugar over a medium flame, until you’ve achieved a slow lava bubbling. Add 1/2 c. cranberries, and stir constantly. You’re looking for a caramelization effect, so you’ll want to keep this stirring thing going for about fifteen minutes – enough time to create a thickly bubbling, deeply brownish-red sauce that is thickening, but not burnt. Take this bit slowly; it’s annoying to have to start over. If you feel you’re too thick, add a little OJ, or lower the flames and set aside to cool slightly, even if fifteen minutes haven’t passed. When it’s reached perfection, spoon it into the center of your springform, and smooth it in an even circle.
4. In a small bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add your eggs, zest, and OJ
5. Bring your wet mixture together with your flour and baking powder and cardamom grounds a little at a time – since this is the cake method, you can beat the heck out of the stuff if you’d like, but small lumps are okay – you’ll have zest lumps, either way so stop when the batter stiffens
6. Finally, stir in your cranberries. Ours were still frozen, and stiffened the batter still further, which made it interesting getting it into the springform, but we got there.

SET YOUR SPRINGFORM ON A SILPAT OR OTHER OVEN-PROTECTOR. When you’re working with berries in a springform, that’s just the name of the game – it will leak, almost always. Bake 1 hr. and 10 minutes, until the top (or really, the bottom that you can see) is deep golden brown. We checked our cake with a bamboo skewer at the one hour mark, but you know your oven best.

There is something buttery and lovely about this purely vegan cake, which won approval from the vegan-leery in our group. It’s not “health food” by any means – cake is cake, people – but it provides a healthier choice in that the Smart Balance margarine has less cholesterol, and the flax brings a bit of added fiber. Plus those gorgeous cranberries – yum! Tart-sweet, butter, dense, moist crumb – a really lovely late-Spring treat. Best eaten outdoors, in the company of friends.