Success: Peanut Butter Cookies

After all the heinousness of breads and cakes and tuile cookies, just making something as simple and sure as peanut butter cookies was a major relief.

 

I still had leftover peanut butter mousse and whipped cream from the tuile cups, so I decided to whip up some peanut butter cookies to decorate. My first attempt at the candy balls had failed - I tried to add shortening as an afterthought, stupid - but of course I couldn't throw it away. I never throw something away if it's made of food! So I added a little of this and a little of that and baked them until they became some intentionally delicately flavored peanut butter cookie boats to complement my mousse. Let me say, I am pretty proud of myself for having learned so much about sweets that I can now do such things.

 

 

They were much prettier before I added the candy balls, but hey, you can't ignore deliciousness. It couldn't be avoided.

 

Then, the very next day, the International Club sprung it on me that the following day would be our recruitment party for new freshmen. THANKS FOR THE WARNING, KIDS! We were having a snack party, so I decided to whip up something easy and unique. How about peanut butter cookies? They'd be transportable, they'd stretch a long way, and they'd be a rare flavor for Japan. Settled.

 

Easy as it was, I'd never made peanut butter cookies before - What? There are other things I like more. Anyway, that's why I decided to give it some thought. I dug through a bunch of recipes, weighing the merits of their ingredients, and settled on this one.  My mom always made rather short peanut butter cookies, so I altered the recipe to half butter, half shortening. When I realized I only had half as much peanut butter as I needed, I also changed the recipe to half peanut butter, half nutella! It was a subtle change, but it was as delicious as one would expect! I also added a dash of salt and sprinkled the tops with sugar.

 

 

They turned out really well and I made them small, so I had something like 130 cookies! Enough for International Club, enough for English Conversation Class, AND enough for my Yosakoi Dance Troupe...And enough for me to snack on the burned ones. Burned ones? Yes. My stupid oven-range from hell gets so hot in the center of the pan that it couldn't NOT burn the middle cookies. Well, I'm ashamed to admit it took me quite a few batches before I realized I should just NOT PUT COOKIES IN THE CENTER OF THE COOKIE SHEET. Problem solved! It was hard not doing that though, since my small oven meant I made about 10+ waves of cookies as it was. Thank god the cooking time wasn't very long.