“This recipe has evolved over many years of experimentation. We think that we have discovered the secret to the perfect peanut butter cookie.” (p. 54)

The heart of this desert.

Godzilla ate my cookies!!!

RECIPE LINK

Only a giant, H-bomb-proof lizard could overlook the mess I made of these simple cookies. OK. Kind of a silly exaggeration. Sorry. The cookies were all eaten in less than a day, but its easy to forgive a cookie for looking like shrapnel when it tastes like sweet, creamy peanuts. And I LOVE peanut butter. LOVE it. Always have – even when it sticks to the top of my mouth.

Everything stared out so well. The best part was beating the butter and peanut butter together (see below). It looked so awesome. But therein lay the fatal flaw that would later refuse to let the cookies hold together. I put in too much butter.

Looks can be deceiving.

I knew I was in trouble when I took a quick peek at the cookies in the oven. They were just melting into pools. Between the two batches, I put the batter back in the fridge to stiffen it up. It helped a bit, but couldn’t overcome the real mistake. How do I know that the butter was the mistake? The recipe relies heavily on butter, and I knew from the beginning that I was making a loose guess about quantity. Why? How?

American recipes rarely give measurements in grams or even ounces when it comes to butter. The measurement for this recipe was 1/2 cup ( 1 stick) unsalted butter. An American size “stick” of butter is not what I usually find/buy in Doha. A brick of French President butter that I most often buy is about the equivalent of 3 sticks of American butter – even a bit more. Anyhoo, I just eyeballed it and thought, “a little bit extra won’t hurt”. Wrong. Sooooo, butter research problem #2 – get the scoop on butter measurements. I will try to convert everything to grams. I have a nice digital scale to help me out. No excuses.

Godzilla Cookies

Were they really that bad? And where did the whole Godzilla reference come from?  If you love peanut butter and crave sugar, they were great. But they simply fell all apart and were too fat-laden. Come to think of it, the peanut butter may have been too oily too. (My fault, not Magnolia’s.) I baked these as a treat to eat while we watched the movie, Godzilla. When Godzilla blasted the giant aphids with nuclear fire and they melted away, I thought of my cookies.

LEARNED: It’s never OK not to be careful. Do your homework BEFORE you take the test.

DETOUR: Nuf said.

P.S. – The kids didn’t care about the cookie shrapnel. They focused on the creamy, sweet, peanut part of the story. All gone.