Peanut "Butter is Good for the Soul" Cookies

I crave peanut butter. I don't know if it is from the salt or the protein or the oil (probably all three), but nothing really hits the spot like a spoonful of peanut butter. We have been out of peanut butter for the last three days, but since we finally have some in the house and it's a stormy day in Panama, David and I decided to make some cookies. 

David wanted to make cookies from a recipe out of The Joy of Cooking, which included 1 cup of sugar and 1 stick of butter. I wanted to make a super healthy version that included chickpeas, but luckily for David we don't have a food processor to mash up the chickpeas.

Time to compromise. 

We sat down and wrote the recipe he wanted to try on the left side, the recipe that I wanted to make on the right side, then went through, ingredient by ingredient, and built our own. What we ended up with looked a lot like the Joy of Cooking version, but we added some dark chocolate and cut some sugar. The cookies hit the spot, so I really cannot complain.

Equipped with a 1953 edition of The Joy of Cooking, Smucker's Peanut Butter, a silly apron my sister brought me back from France (doesn't it look the kitty has been eating a lot of peanut butter cookies?!), and a stormy Sunday afternoon, David and I rolled up our sleeves and started baking.

Peanut "Butter is Good for the Soul" Cookies

INGREDIENTS 
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup soft butter
1 egg
1 cup peanut butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
Dark chocolate bits and/or Hershey's Kisses 

Preheat oven to 375 (if your oven has the degrees, our oven just has the categories Max, Med-High, Med, Low so we are always guessing).

Against the backdrop of hurricane-sounding winds outside, we blended together the honey, butter, egg, and peanut butter.

In another bowl, we combined the flour, salt, and baking soda.

Teamwork! David slowly sprinkled the dry ingredients while I stirred them into the wet ingredients and then added dark chocolate bits in some of the cookies for good measure.

While the cookies baked we stopped to appreciate the storminess. Our apartment is on a hill that overlooks the bay,

so we can usually see the rains coming from the north out the back windows...

Our first batch of cookies came out burned on the bottom so we turned our oven temperature down and moved the rack up a notch. The second batch came out much better, and on the third batch, I added Hershey kisses for David. The cookies will take 10-15 minutes depending on your oven and will yield around 22 cookies. My sister, who normally doesn't like sweet treats, said that they taste more like biscuits and helped herself to a second serving.

With the sweetness of the honey and the creaminess of the peanut butter, these cookies are good for the soul. But I think making (and eating!) cookies with someone you love is good for the soul too.