Homemade Stir Free Peanut Butter

I have an issue with natural peanut butter. That glob of oil on the top, yeah gross. Now try stirring it. It makes a mess whenever I do, and the bottom is really dry. I read about making my own peanut butter over at Averie Cooks. It didn't seem to hard, plus we had peanuts in the house that no one was eating.  The difference between the peanuts I used was that they were dry roasted in the shell peanuts and Averie used honey roasted shelled peanuts. I'm going to describe my experience using the peanuts in the shell, of course if you want you can also use shelled like Averie-will probably be much easier. All the work's in the shelling.

Shell 16 ounces or 2 cups worth of peanuts. I don't have a scale, so I used measuring cups. You want to remove the papery skins from the peanuts too, they usually come right off, but if they give you trouble, jut roll between your palms.

Shells from peanuts

You don't want peanuts that look like this:

Toss these peanuts

Peanuts that look like this are fine:

Peanut Color Palette:

The first 2 are okay, toss peanuts of the last color

Peanuts for the peanut butter

Measuring out the peanuts

2 Cups worth of peanuts

Then place in food processor and scrape down if needed, I didn't have anything to scrape down. I took around 5-7 minutes to become peanut butter. You can add your own flavorings in the last minute of processing. I didn't need to add oil.

in the food processor

Place into glass jar and refrigerate.

I got the same results, mine is a stir-free peanut butter.

The Best Peanut Butter Cookies Ever...Really?!

Today I decided to try out the 3 ingredient peanut butter cookies that have been touted as being the best peanut butter cookies ever on many blogs and recipe sites. The recipe is also quite simple and easy to memorize. Sounds good, thousands of people claiming they are the best peanut butter cookies, has many 5 star reviews, easy recipe, and quick to make.

Here's the recipe (the key is 1):
1 C. Sugar
1 C. Peanut Butter
1 Egg

Mix everything together, roll into balls, make criss-cross indentations with a fork and bake in a preheated 350º oven for 8-10 minutes. Let cool on wire rack for 5-7 minutes.

Yep, just wrote that whole thing by heart, I've got this useless recipe memorized.

So I'm reading that ingredient list and saying no way can that make good cookies, but thousands of people love them. I figured I'll try them.

Making the batter was easy. I like tasting my batter to make sure it's mixed well and to give me a preview of what's to come. This tasted grainy, even thoroughly mixed.

Rolling into balls was easy. Making criss-cross indentations a little tricker. For the 1st batch I pressed on the balls with the fork-it didn't matter if it was plastic or metal. The cookies would then crack around the edges. I would either leave it like that or pinch back together. The second batch I tried flattening them out with my hand before creating indentations-bad idea. I did find that less and slower pressure with the fork made prettier cookies.

Oven Time

1st batch-10 minutes

-they looked cooked, once cooled I tasted them, there was a weird texture and lousy taste, very crispy. -There was also a bit of a bad smell which I assume was from burnt sugar.

2nd batch 8 minutes

I thought that maybe I had overcooked my first batch so decided to leave these in for 8 minutes. The ones that I had flattened by hand, seemed to be a bit burnt, probably also the sugar. These tasted just as bad as the first batch.

Yield: It was interesting to me that people seemed to get so few cookies out of this recipe. One reviewer said she got 6-8 cookies. How big were your cookies lady? I got 2 dozen regular size cookies. I tasted 2, that leaves 22 cookies that I'm pretty sure no one wants.

Verdict: I don't actually understand what's good about these. Have people never actually tasted good food in their lives. I seriously don't recommend this recipe. It was a waste of ingredients. That's my verdict, if anyone else in my family has a different take, I'll update this and let you what they think.

UPDATE: Some people in my family actually liked these and thought they were good. In the end the cookies that I thought I was going to have to throw out, all got eaten. So I guess this is just a recipe that some people like and some people hate. You're just going to have to try it for yourself.