Easy Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe

Saturday eve, babe asleep, pizza ordered, thoughts of the morning's coffee already simmering in my mind, I pried myself away from book and couch to make a batch of peanut butter cookies. Not that I haven't an arsenal of very good peanut butter cookie recipes but I believe there's always room for one more solid recipe. This one comes by way of Tara O'Brady, who writes the blog Seven Spoons and who recently published a cookbook of the same name.

I took Tara's recipe for her family's favorite peanut butter cookies and turned it gluten-free, swapping the whole wheat and all purpose flours in the original for finely ground oat flour. I made a few more tweaks as well but hewed basically to the bones of the recipe as it was written. The result? Soft, slightly chewy, salty, almost melt-in-your mouth cookies that taste even better the second day. I might add a smattering of milk chocolate chunks in my next go-round and will experiment with using a different fat to make them dairy-free. I will note, however, that these beauties are unapologetically cookie; there's a lot of dark brown sugar, a little bit of maple syrup, and a healthy addition of salt to keep things interesting. I'm quite partial to the flourless peanut butter cookie in my book, but when you want a cookie that's a bit more fluffy - as these are - some sort of flour is necessary. Oat flour works perfectly here and gives the whole grain aspect I crave.

Oat flour is one to keep stocked in your gluten-free pantry (or even if you're not gluten-free). In cookies where less than 2 cups of all-purpose flour is called for you can use it in a 1:1 swap with good results. It's lovely in muffins, yielding a tender crumb (but a bit of flax seed may be necessary to hold things together more firmly). Cakes, too, benefit from oat flour. I don't really go for for gluten-free all-purpose flour blends because while they do make baking a tad easier I like using specific naturally gluten-free flours in specific recipes to complement the other flavors going on. Peanut butter and oat just work so well together that using oat flour here hardly required a second thought.

You could make these cookies larger and sandwich vanilla (or chocolate!) ice cream between them or make them smaller and stretch the dough further. Or crush them up and use as a base for a cheesecake or a chocolate cream pie. Or spread some nutella on top and devour.

You can grind your own oat flour; use 1 ¼ cups rolls oats and whirl in a food processor until fine. As always, if gluten isn't an issue, you may use all-purpose, whole wheat, or spelt flour here though I do greatly like the mild sweetness and whole grain component of the oat flour and would argue in its favor even if you don't keep gluten-free.