My "Happy Little Surprise" - Peanut Butter Cookies 小小惊喜 - 花生酥饼

I accidentally created these crunchy and fragrant peanut cookies last week.  It's not the traditional melt-in-the-mouth peanut cookies,  nor the peanut butter cookies made with peanut butter spread. It's made of real butter, ground peanut, and peanut oil. These are taste-bud-pleasing peanut cookies. By combining butter and oil, you end up with cookies that have the great buttery flavor and the soft crumbly texture that you ever could with pure butter or pure peanut oil.  I call them my "happy little surprise". Brought some to the office, everyone loved them and requested for more.

Before I tell you how I came up with the recipe,  I have to say I don't like the cookies with peanut butter spread. With its added emulsifiers, sweeteners, and hydrogenated oils,  they are too artificial to me.  I don't like shortening and margarine either. Did I tell you what happened to the can of shortening I left in the cabinet in my pantry?

 I opened one can of shortening and scooped one tablespoon for my snow-skin mooncake experiment two year ago.  After that, I totally forgot about it. When I lifted the cover one year later, to my shock, the trace of the spoon was intact, the color and texture had no change. No smell, no mould, no discoloration, nothing. Under Singapore's warm humid weather,  can you imagine the can of opened shortening was not rotten or spoiled one year after being stored in a container that is not airtight? Well, maybe the product is in high "quality" and lasting. However, this is definitely not the same quality I am looking for when prepare food for my family. Shortening is a big No-No ever since then in my baking. As for margarine. I have never had a tub of margarine in my house.

Okay, back to my peanut cookies.  In order to repeat the recipe,  I have to recall what  I have done to my original recipe. I remember I only had 400g peanut powder at hand versus the 500g required in the original recipe. What I should have done was work out the amount for every single ingredient used in the recipe, based on 5:4 ratio. What I did was only work out the right amount of the flour. As for the rest of the ingredients, I simply doubled the amount.

Here is my original recipe and my proportional recipe with 400g ground peanut.

Ingredients

- 250g ground peanut -> 400g
- 200g plain flour -> 320g
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder ->1 teaspoon
- 80g icing sugar-> 160g
- 1/4 teaspoon salt ->1/2 teaspoon
- 80g unsalted butter, melted -> 160g
- 3/4 cup peanut oil (or corn oil) -> 1.5 cup (~330g)

Red denotes wrong ratio.

While preparing butter, I made another mistake.  The butter and oil ratio was supposed to be 1:2 in the original recipe. Somehow I melted 360g of butter. I guess I must have put all the butter on the table into my microwave!  Eventually, I used less peanut oil to form the cookie dough. This has dramatically changed the butter to peanut oil ratio from 1:2 to almost 3:1.

The dough looks fine. Without realising anything wrong, I cut out the dough with a cookie cutter and sent them to the oven. When I opened oven door,  I was surprised.  They looked a bit flat.   My daughter ate one, and asked for another one, and another one again.  She liked the crumbly texture and the buttery fragrance of these cookies.  What a sumptuous success!

Except for the degree of sweetness, the rest is perfect to me.  So I reduced sugar amount,  and there comes my own treasured recipe.

PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

Ingredients

- 250g ground peanut (store-bought)
- 250g plain flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 100g icing sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 250g unsalted butter, melted
- 80ml peanut oil (or corn oil)

Egg wash
- 1 egg yolk

Directions

1. Mix ground peanut powder, plain flour, baking powder, icing sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. Mix with a whisk or hands continue well combined.
2. Pour in melted butter, mix with hands. Add peanut oil to the mixture and continue mix till a dough is formed. If the dough is too dry, add peanut oil by teaspoonful.
3. Take 6g of dough and shape into a ball. Take a pen cap and press it lightly on top of the cookies to creat a design.
4. Place about 2cm apart on lined baking tray.
5. Bake at 180C for 18-20 minutes or till golden brown.

I am linking this post to Cook and Celebrate CNY : 2015 organised by Yen of Eat Your Heart Out , Zoe of Bake For happy Kids and Diana of Domestic Goddess Wannabe.

I am also submitting this post to "My Treasured Recipes #5 - Chinese New Year Goodies (Jan/Feb 2015)" hosted by Miss B of Everybody Eats Well in Flanders and co-hosted by Charmaine of Mimi Bakery House.