Recipes from Aunt Flora -- JTR's Peanut Butter Cookies

I'd first like to go on record that I HATE it when tech platforms change and don't give you enough instructions into what those updates/improvements will mean in practical terms.

I thought I was doing pretty well learning how to play in .html codes in the old version of Blogger so that I could get rid of extraneous spacing, coding, and lay photos in as a nice block.

Unfortunately, while the new version of Blogger will let me import more photos at a time, and determine more sizes, it is severely limiting on where you can place photos. You can only center/left/right justify one photo at a time. Even playing in the .html codes didn't resolve my issues.

Thus, the only way I could get all these photos in one post is to strip them down the side .. for now.

Plus, look at the time stamp [1:08 a.m.]. That's the real time. Instead of posting for upload at 9:00 a.m., I am still awake, baking, and blogging in the wee small hours of the morning.

I started this process HOURS ago--like on a whole different day--both the recipe making, the cooking, and then trying to upload and process this.

I am annoyed.

I am tired.

I should have just not gotten this done on time.

I have sent off a snippy feedback entry.

And now ....

The real portion of this post!

I needed a recipe to satisfy both my guilt for not feeding the IT boys last week and my guilt for subjecting my MailRoom Guy to the unfortunate social issues of my Wonder Intern. MailRoom Guy requested peanut butter cookies, and I owe him a lot. The IT boys like crunchy. The family recipe book had an untested recipe for peanut butter cookies - unlike any other that I had tried previously. Thank goodness for Aunt Flora's family cookbook. Two departments. One recipe.

I made a bunch of missteps with this though. I didn't start making the dough until 7:00 p.m. Then I doubled the batch. As you'll see the photos that just happened to lay in next to this text, I misjudged the volume of dough and the size of the container. (Physics wasn't my strongest subject in high school.) I had to swap out bowls once I figured out I had 5 cups of flour going on. Then I realized how long I would be baking ... 6 cookies per sheet. 12-15 minutes each .... So late. So many cookies. So tired ...

All of this struggle is still not enough to say thank you to the MailRoom Guy. The Wonder Intern was/is ... um ...

Well.

He is a wonder, alright.

As my other granny would say.

JTR aka Janean's Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup margarine (I used butter, 2 sticks)

1 cup sugar, white

1 cup sugar, brown

1 egg

2 tablespoons hot water

1 cup peanut butter

1 tablespoon baking soda

2 1/2 cup flour

Blend margarine and sugars.

Beat in egg, water, and peanut butter.

Combine dry ingredients and stir them into margarine mixture.

Roll in balls and roll in sugar.*

Press with fork on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

* Usually peanut butter cookie recipes call for chilling prior to the rolling-phase. This one doesn't.

Since I used SO MUCH BUTTER the dough was warm and I just didn't see the point of getting greasy. I knew I wasn't going to be rolling it in refined sugar either. Instead I used my handy cookie scooper. I plopped the dough down on the parchment paper, pressed them down with the fork tines, and then sprinkled with a combination of demerara sugar and crystallized sugar to up the crunch factor.

I have lost count of how many cookies I've eaten (not really, only 3).

It's over 9 dozen cookies and counting.

I'm sure my neighbors will be happy when the kitchen timer stops going off, I stop tromping across my floor to my bureau/cooling racks, and I finally go to bed.

Me. too.

Wait. There's the ding for the last batch. Glory Hallelujah. Now I have to figure out how to get 9 dozen cookies in containers and to work. .... Later, MUCH LATER, today.

Response to comments: It's not the size of the pan holding me back from making more than 6 cookies at a time. It's the depth and quality of the oven. It's not calibrated right, but after almost 6 years, we've come to a sensory understanding of each other. I can tell by smell and then by a quick look. Also, it's not as deep or wide as a regular house oven. I have exactly one cookie sheet that will fit in there. My other ones won't fit in one way, and the the "normal" way, kicks the door open and then things NEVER finish.

Honestly.

One day we'll do a tour of the kitchenette. It's not even a "kitchen" per se according to you or me, or the housing authority. It's the type of kitchen that makes me mock all the people on House Hunters (the US version). Excuse me: Granite countertops, 2 fridges, a US style fridge, an ice machine, garbage disposal, dish washer, grilling devices, 6 burners? WTH. GET OVER YOURSELVES! Do you have a counter top? Do you have a full fridge? Can you shut your oven door with a normal cookie sheet in it? That, a knife, a pot, a pan, and a cutting board, and a burner ... that's all you really need.

Those European houses where there is a coil, a fridge under the counter, and a hole in the ground? They would LOVE my kitchenette!