Sometimes, when it really and truly is the very last thing I should be doing – when I’m tired and overwhelmed, when the kitchen sink brims with a day’s worth of dishes, baskets of laundry beckon, and children need help with homework — I turn my back on it all and find refuge in baking a batch of cookies.
That’s exactly what it was like this afternoon when preparations for the school week needed to be underway and a filet of salmon and bag of dried lentils had to be cooked into dinner. But instead, I gathered ingredients to make something sweet and nurturing and totally unnecessary, putting practical tasks aside.
A Flourless Peanut Butter Cookie
Lucky for my to-do list, this is a four-ingredient cookie that takes less than five minutes to stir into a batter. It’s also just two sheet pans worth, so one go-round in the oven. The cookies were inspired by a recipe in Real Simple that I simplified further by knocking out three ingredients and cutting the batch in half. It could have been pared down to a three-ingredient cookie, only I had to add chocolate (Peanut butter without chocolate? Sacrilege.).
I suppose there could be worse distractions from life’s chores than baking: I could be heavily into online gambling.
Or there could be better ones: I could be writing grants to fund a small charity.
Baking as Therapy
But baking cookies it is. And today, it calmed me, made my kitchen smell heavenly, and resulted in a stack of homemade flourless peanut butter cookies for school lunches and after school treats.
And now I can get back to the business of getting ready for the week, and turning salmon and lentils into dinner….maybe with a Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie for dessert.
4-Ingredient Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsweetened, salted creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar or coconut sugar
- 1 egg
- ½ cup dark chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheet with parchment paper, silpats, or coat with non-stick cooking spray.
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In a medium bowl, put the peanut butter, brown sugar, and egg. Use a rubber spatula to mash and stir the ingredients into a smooth batter. Add the chocolate, and stir again until evenly distributed.
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Pinch up a tablespoon of dough and roll in the palms of your hands into a smooth ball. Cover each baking sheet with 12 balls. Press a fork firmly into the dough, first in one direction, and then the opposite direction. If the dough crumbles a bit, just patch it back together.
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Bake until the cookies brown slightly and you start to see a hint of a darker rim around the cookie, 10 to 12 minutes.
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Remove from oven and cool. Store in an air-tight container.
Inspired by Real Simple magazine’s Peanut Butter Cookies
