This is a fine and tasty recipe for making chewy peanut butter cookies that started off badly as a lousy Internet recipe. Said recipe used too much flour and a baking time certain to produce bone dry cookies with dark undersides. As is typical, I made important modifications so you don't experience any disappointment like I did.

Let's simply say the recommended baking time of 18 to 22 minutes was absurd. A total baking time of 14 minutes is quite adequate. Ultimately you want a cookie that is chewy, not crumbly, and one with very noticeable peanut taste. Both of those desirable characteristics are lost with too long a baking time.

The good news is you will be quite successful using the recipe below. It differs in ingredients, amounts and baking procedure ... ergo, almost everything. I do have to give the original recipe creator credit for one very nice and uncommon idea ... using parchment paper on the baking sheet, as that makes the baked cookies very easy to remove and it keeps the baking sheet clean.

Note that there is no salt in this recipe for two reasons. The peanut butter has salt in it and the regular salted butter does also.

Have fun! You and your family will love these cookies. And they are very easy to make.

Ingredients: (makes two dozen 2 1/2" diameter cookies)

1 1/2 cups of creamy peanut butter

1 cup of light-brown sugar, packed

1 quarter pound stick of softened butter

1 extra large or jumbo egg

1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

A bowl of thumbprint topping consisting of 2 tbsp. of peanut butter and 2 tbsp. of honey, mixed

Other materials:

A roll of parchment paper

2, 12" x 17" baking sheets

A kitchen scale (optional)

Directions:

Adjust the oven shelves so the baking shelf is in the middle of the oven, top to bottom, and then place an extra baking sheet on a lower shelf. That assures there will be better even heating all over the bottom of the higher baking sheet used for the cookies.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Whisk together the flour and baking powder in a one quart bowl.

Use an electric mixer, mixing bowl and regular beater on low to medium speed and mix the peanut butter, sugar, and butter until smooth.

Add the egg and continue mixing for one minute.

Add the flour mixture gradually (within two minutes, a total of four additions, stopping the mixer for each addition) then mix on low to medium low speed to combine.

Scrape down the inside of the mixing bowl with a soft spatula, then mix again for no more than two minutes.

Divide the completed cookie dough into two equal parts, then make 12 balls of cookie dough from each part.

The smart way to do that is to use a kitchen scale and weigh the dough so you get the amounts exactly right. Then, split each half into two portions, again using the kitchen scale for accuracy.

At that point you can easily divide each of the four sections of dough into six equal size pieces of dough. What I do is roll each section of dough into a 9" long cylinder on a wood cutting board and cut it into six, 1 1/2" long pieces using a pastry knife.

Roll any given piece of dough in your hands to form a ball, then flatten the ball into a dough circle about 2" in diameter.

Place each of the 12 dough circles roughly 2 inches apart from each other and from the sides of a parchment paper lined 12" x 17" baking sheet.

Press your thumb into the center of each dough circle to a depth of about 1/4".

Dispense about 1/2 tsp. of thumbprint topping into each depression.

Bake the cookies, rotating the baking sheet after 7 minutes of baking time.

Continue baking for the second 7 minutes, then remove the baking sheet from the oven.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for two minutes.

Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack using a thin bladed hard spatula. They are very easy to remove from the parchment paper with the spatula.

Do the second/final batch of cookies with the second group of 12 pieces of cookie dough.

Let the cookies cool to room temperature, first on the cooling rack and then on a plate.

Store the cooled cookies in either a metal or plastic container with a tight fitting lid.

Enjoy!