Peanut Butter Cookies – no flour, alternative sugar

I read an article online recently about a woman who, as a child, learned to make cookies in order to earn money to buy things her parents couldn’t afford. She had a recipe for peanut butter cookies that called for peanut butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. I guess that was the first time I’d heard of flourless peanut butter cookies, so I did an internet rabbit hole search. At some point, some blogger mentioned using alternative sugar, and I was off to the races.

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Flourless & Sugarless Peanut Butter Cookies

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Serves: 20 cookies

Cooking Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 cup peanut butter (use a no-sugar peanut butter to cut the sugar out entirely)
• 1 cup sugar alternative (or sugar) - I used erythritol
• 1 egg
• 1t vanilla extract

Instructions

1

Preheat oven to 350° F

2

Mix the ingredients together - I used the Kitchenaid, could use whisk or hand blender

3

Scoop cookie dough onto parchment covered baking sheet; optionally, roll the scooped dough into a ball and press a fork into the dough to flatten it into the traditional peanut butter cookie look. The cookie texture is a little different between just scooped and scooped-then-rolled.

4

Bake 10 minutes

5

Remove from oven and leave on the baking sheet 5 more minutes - they cook a bit more

6

Move to a cooling rack until cooled through, which helps them keep the right texture

Nutrition

• 80 per cookie Calories
• 0.8 per cookie g Fiber

I watched some videos, found a bunch of recipes – so many, in fact, that when I looked online today to find the one that originally inspired me, I never found it. Pretty much the consensus was 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar, and one egg plus sometimes other ingredients. Some use less sugar, some use maple syrup, some change out the egg for something else (I saw both buttermilk and baked sweet potatoes for that), and the one I originally read included vanilla extract. I thought there was a reason to go with regular peanut butter already enhanced with sugar, but today (after buying Jif) I find that many of them say they used natural, peanut-only peanut butter. Now that I’ve eaten the cookie, I would say a no-sugar, natural peanut butter is a better idea, because even that amount of sugar is affecting me. However, this always needs lots of stirring.

I chose erythritol for the sugar substitute, the Kroger organic brand Simple Truth – zero calories, 1:1 for replacing sugar in baking, and used 1 cup. The cookies are plenty sweet – too sweet, maybe – so next time I might try 3/4 c of the sugar alternative with natural peanut butter to cut down on the sugar rush.

Other recipes put oats or oat flour in them (gluten free, but maybe more substance) which would increase the level of protein and maybe cut the sweetness too. Baking soda is another ingredient I saw, as was butter. They don’t need to rise at all – they don’t flatten out any during baking. Unless maybe you add butter??

I used a cookie scoop to make 20 cookies from this recipe, but only 15 fit on my first sheet. That made me realize there might be a difference in texture if I actually rolled the cookies in my palms before flattening with a fork, from just plopping them out of the scoop onto the tray and flattening them, since they are a bit crumbly both in appearance and in texture. Not toooooo crumbly, just a little different from what I was expecting. Unfortunately, I set the timer but didn’t turn it on, so the last 5 are a bit over done – but yeah, you can see the texture is a little different in the rolled cookies from the scooped-only ones.