American Heritage Baking—Let’s Bake and Learn

The Classic Peanut Butter Cookie--X Marks the Top

By Nancy Baggett

Picture the classic American peanut butter cookie: Plump, crisp, full of flavor, and distinctively marked on top with the crisscross of a fork. Nearly everybody knows and loves this staple in the American cookie repertoire. It’s been filling our cookie jars forever—hasn’t it?

Actually, peanuts in general and peanut butter cookies in particular are fairly new on our baking scene. Introduced into America by slaves, peanuts were scorned by most people until hungry Yankee soldiers developed a taste for them during the Civil War. Even today, peanuts are as disrespected as Rodney Dangerfield: The cheap seats are described as the “peanut gallery” and things of little value are dismissed as worth “peanuts.”

Peanut butter didn’t appear until the late 1800s, when physicians Dr. Ambrose W. Straub of St. Louis, Missouri, and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, independently began using ground peanuts as an alternative protein source for patients. In 1895 Dr. Kellogg and his brother W.K. patented their product, describing it in official documents as "a pasty adhesive substance that is for convenience of distinction termed nut butter." Made with steamed peanuts instead of the roasted ones used in peanut butter today, it was likely bland and sludge-like. Maybe the brothers moved on to developing cereals out of disappointment!

By the turn of the century peanut butter was catching on but not yet widely commercially available, so home cooks usually had to make their own. Well-known cookbook author Sarah Tyson Rorer included the first peanut butter cookie I’ve come upon in her 1998 work, Mrs. Rorer’s New Cookbook. Dramatically different from modern peanut butter cookies, her thin, hard wafers (see the sidebar) called for both homemade peanut butter and peanut meal. They probably looked like graham crackers.

How did today’s peanut butter cookie get its crisscrossed top? No one knows for sure, but one of the first peanut butter cookie recipes I’ve found shaped that way is in a cookbook by the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie, Mrs. Ruth Wakefield. Her eponymous 1936 Toll House Tried and True Recipes not only contained her famous chocolate chip cookie, but a peanut butter cookie that was rolled into balls, then flattened and decorated with the crisscross of a fork.

A similar recipe called Peanut Butter Balls appeared in several editions of an undated Pillsbury product pamphlet distributed in the 1930s, so Mrs. Wakefield may have borrowed her shaping method from that. In any case, both the Pillsbury pamphlet and Mrs. Wakefield’s popular cookbook were widely circulated, so the technique made its way in into millions of American homes. Seventy years later, cooks everywhere still faithfully mark their peanut butter cookies in that fashion.

Double Chipster Peanut Butter Cookies (printable Recipe)

The American peanut butter cookie has gotten bigger, richer, and bolder tasting over the years, but usually retains its characteristic crisscrossed top. My decadent, updated family-pleasing version features a butter-and-brown-sugar-dough studded with semisweet chocolate and peanut butter morsels. Both kinds of morsels add bursts of flavor, and the peanut butter chips contribute an appealing creaminess too. For extra peanutiness, you can toss some chopped, salted peanuts into the dough as well.

Tip: Several manufacturers make peanut butter morsels, but I greatly prefer the Reeses brand. Their morsels taste a lot like their traditional peanut butter cup candies and are a great enhancement to these cookies.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
2/3 cup smooth peanut butter
1 3/4 cups packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons light or dark corn syrup
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
Generous 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 2/3 cups all-purpose white flour
1 1/2 cup ( 9 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 1/2 cups (9 ounces) peanut butter morsels
3/4 cup finely chopped salted peanuts, optional

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Generously grease several large baking sheets, or spray with nonstick spray.

In a large mixer bowl with the mixer on low, then medium speed, beat together the butter, peanut butter, sugar, eggs, corn syrup, vanilla, baking powder, soda, and salt until well blended and lightened in color, about 2 minutes. Working on low speed, beat in half the flour. Stir in the remaining flour, chocolate, and peanut butter morsels, and peanuts (if using) just until thoroughly incorporated. Let stand 10 to 15 minutes to firm up slightly.

Divide the dough into quarters. Then divide each quarter into 9 balls; space them about
3 1/2 inches apart on baking sheets. With the heel of the hand, press down on the balls until about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Finish each cookie by adding crisscross marks with the tines of a large dinner fork.

Bake in the middle third of the oven for 9 to 14 minutes or until the cookies are just tinged with brown and barely firm when tapped in the center; be careful not to over-bake. Remove the pans from the oven. Let the cookies firm up several minutes. Using a wide-bladed spatula, transfer the cookies to racks and let cool completely.

The cookies will keep, airtight, at room temperature for up to a week, or frozen, for several months.

Makes 36 3-inch cookies.