Crushed Peanut Cookies
These are NOT a peanut-butter cookie!
Makes about 50-60 cookies of the size shown in the photo.
Ingredients
4 eggs
1 cup oil
1¼ cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 teaspoons baking powder
small pinch of salt
5½ cups flour (you may need a bit more if the dough is too sticky)
200 grams shelled, unsalted peanuts, with the brown skins on, ground
1 cup regular sized chocolate chips
Method
Yes, readers, I have used this basic cookie recipe before. but there are so many great things you can do without margarine, that I am using it again here. If you haven’t saved the recipe before, save it now!
Preheat oven to 350° F/180° C.
In your mixer, beat the eggs, oil, sugar, vanilla, baking powder and the tiny bit of salt. Mix well. Add in the flour gradually until you have a smooth cookie dough. Pluck off a small piece of dough and roll it on your palm. (If it sticks to your hands, add in a bit more flour, perhaps 2 more tablespoons, until the dough is smooth, but this dough is almost always smooth as is.)
Process peanuts with the sharp metal “S” blade only until they are small bits, but not a powder. Set aside.
To shape cookies, pull off small bits of dough and roll them into balls. The cookies look nicest when they are miniature sized as shown. Larger sized cookies mean fewer per batch and they are less attractive. Flatten slightly with your thumb. Roll the cookies in the crushed peanuts, then lay them out on parchment-paper-lined cookie trays. Bake two trays at a time in preheated oven for 8-9 minutes until very slightly browned. Remove immediately from oven. Before they cool down, quickly take three chocolate chips and press them down into each cookie’s center. If you wait even a few minutes, the chocolate chips won’t go into the cookies and they won’t “stick.” Repeat this process until you have used all your cookie dough and the necessary amount of chocolate chips.
As the cookies cool, transfer the first 2 trays of cookies onto shallow pans or trays and slide them uncovered into the freezer to set while you do the next 2 trays. By the time the next two trays are out of the oven and chocolate chips inserted, the first 2 trays will have hardened in your freezer. Now you can remove them safely to plastic bags for freezing, without squashing the soft and warm chocolate chip center in the process.
