Christmas Cookies Week 1 - Peanut Butter Cookies - Foodie Friday

Today is the first of four Foodie Fridays focusing - boy that was a lot of Fs - on Christmas cookies. Each week I'll give you a new recipe for cookies my family always makes around the holidays.

We'll get things started with my favorite peanut butter cookie recipe.

Enjoy!

As you can see from the photos above - and below - this recipe makes cookies that tend to spread out and become thin. I'm not sure if this is user error of some sort that has passed from my mom to me - her cookies look exactly like mine - or if it's just the recipe. At any rate, I love my peanut butter cookies this way!

Ingredients
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. white sugar
1 c. margarine - softened
1 c. peanut butter
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
2 c. flour
vanilla - the original recipe doesn't have an amount but I add about 1 tsp.

Directions
Mix in order. Chill for 1 hour. Roll into balls - about 1 T. of dough in each ball. Press with a fork. Bake at 350* for 10 minutes.

Because the dough has a tendency to thin and spread, that 1 T. of dough will make quite a large cookie. Use less dough if you want smaller cookies or are using a smaller cookie sheet. Mine usually end up baking together into a jig saw puzzle of sorts.

That recipe is so very simple - and old. It's so old, in fact, that instead of specifying a measurement amount of dough to use for each cookie - like teaspoon or tablespoon - it specifies to make them about the size of hickory nuts.

I'm not sure where my mom got the recipe and I should ask her some day when I think about it. It's the only recipe I ever remember her making them and they always turned out the same way - a little crunch on the edges and kind of smooshy and soft in the middle. After a day or two the middles got harder and they were crunchy just like the outsides.