Peanut Butter & Jelly Cookies

Peanut butter and jelly on toast is my go-to for lunch if I’m feeling particularly lazy. It’s funny because I was never a big P B & J kid growing up, but now I love it.

I also love cookies (always loved cookies), so why not combine my loves of peanut butter and jelly and cookies??

The answer is, there is no reason why not so I did and you can too.

Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

1 cup flour
½ cup cornmeal
½ t baking powder
¼ t salt
1 stick butter, softened to room temperature
½ cup dark brown sugar
2 t vanilla
1 egg
1 ½ cups peanut butter (smooth, and not the natural kind)
Jelly/jam/preserves (I chose raspberry because that’s my favorite – you choose yours)

Directions

Pour the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt into a bowl and whisk until well combined. Set aside.

In a separate bowl put the butter, brown sugar and vanilla and mix until smooth, figure 3 or so minutes. Next add in the egg and peanut butter and again beat until smooth, another couple minutes.

Take half your flour and cornmeal mixture and add that to the butter mixture. Beat that on low until it’s smooth, then add the second half and add and beat that in as well. Put your mixer away, you’re done with it.

Take a large sheet of parchment paper and spoon the dough onto it. Using your hands, flatten the dough a bit and add a second sheet of parchment paper on top of it.

Take a rolling pin and roll out the dough until it’s about ¼ inch thick. Transfer the dough (parchment paper and all) to a cookie sheet so it’s easier to handle and put in the fridge to firm up, about an hour.

When you’re ready to bake, take the dough out of the oven and remove the top parchment paper.

Here’s where I got a little creative – you don’t have to. I got these cool rolling pins with patterns on them, so I ran one of them lightly over the dough, just to give it a texture. Trust me, it’s kind of cool.

Anyway, take a cookie cutter and cut out cookies and place them on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. These won’t spread too much so you should be able to get 8 to a sheet. Take any unused dough, reform it into a sheet and refrigerate again until you take these out of the oven and are ready for the next batch.

Bake at 375 for about 11-13 minutes, until they start to get a nice golden brown. As always, since ovens can vary a lot, start watching them about 10 or so minutes in to make sure they get to the color you want.

When they’re done, let them cool on the pans for a couple minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once cool, pair up the cookies and put a teaspoon or so of jam/jelly/preserves on one half and cover it with the other, and you have P B & J cookies!