Baking Bouchon - Recipe 39: Better Nutters

I haven't been a huge fan of the cookies in this cookbook up to this point.  They've all been crispy cookies and I just don't care about crispy cookies.  I like puffy, soft, chewy cookies.

missing the oatmeal.... oops!

But these Better Nutters (a.k.a. Nutter Butters - but I imagine that name is copyrighted so they can't call them that) are absolutely my favorite cookies in this book so far.

The batter comes together pretty easily with butter, peanut butter, brown sugar, eggs and flour... basic peanut butter cookie stuff.  There are 2 unique things in here, oats and toasted peanuts.  I like the texture the oats bring to the cookie and the toasted peanuts definitely up the ante with the peanut flavor.  When I first read that I had to toast peanuts, chop them and mix them into the batter I wondered why I couldn't just use crunchy peanut butter and save myself the extra step.  I'm sure it would work fine but toasting the nuts separately definitely gives it a great, roasted flavor.

The hardest part of these cookies was cutting them out.  The dough softens up SO quickly.  Seriously, I refrigerated the dough for overnight so it was super chilled and by the time I rolled it out and cut out a few circles the dough was so soft I could barely lift it.  I had to stick it in the freezer 3 times during the rolling/cutting process.  It was weird.


The filling for these cookies is reminiscent of the peanut butter, marshmallow mousse I made to fill the strawberry cupcakes.  That stuff was way easier to make than this... not that I had any trouble.  I'm not saying that to be cocky, I'm saying it because you all should be SO surprised and SUPER proud of me.  I made something that required cooking sugar and I didn't screw it up or burn it or burn myself.

The filling is a mix of the basic buttercream recipe in the cookbook combined with peanut butter and a little salt.  To make the buttercream you cook sugar and water to "soft ball" stage (soft ball refers to the state the sugar will be in when it cools so if you cooked sugar to soft ball stage and cooled it down it would still be soft, like a gummy bear as opposed to hard crack which would be like a lollipop).  The cooked sugar gets whipped into egg whites and that mixture gets whipped with butter.  It makes a super yummy frosting that it a bit lighter than a traditional American buttercream which made by whipping butter and powdered sugar together.

So, yeah, I did all that and didn't mess up.  Yeah me!

The cookies are so yummy!  They have a great roasty, peanuty flavor.  They are also pretty crispy but I don't mind.  They also aren't very sweet which is good since you've got all that sweet, yummy filling in it.

The filling is sweet and salty and the perfect addition to the cookie.

As much as I like these cookies, CA LOVED them.  He kept going back into the kitchen and grabbing another one, taking a bite and saying "Mmmm".  He didn't even have any random suggestions for improvement which is pretty impressive.  I think he was a little sad that I took all the leftovers to work.  He expressed his disappointment by dipping into the open box of Oreos and while grumbling that I'm trying to make him fat.  (Seriously, if I don't have another Oreo in my house for the next year I'll be happy.  I'm tired of looking at them.)  He's got the whole thing backwards, if I was trying to make him fat I'd keep all the good stuff in the house.  I think he might be confused that these cookies were somehow healthier than Oreos.  They may have less fake crap in them but healthy they are not.

Later kids!
Julie