Here at the farm, this past week, we hosted our farmhouse Appreciation Dinner for our farm family of volunteers and helpers. It’s a marvelous time to get together and get to know one another. For the dinner, we ask for each one to bring a plate of cookies that we can exchange at the end of the evening for them to take home. 

As I thumbed through the recipes in my mind, I wondered what homemade cookie I might bake for this special occasion. Pumpkin cookies? No. Oatmeal Cookies? Not today. Chocolate Chip Cookies? Everyone does those.   Peanut Butter Cookies? Hmnn. I think, maybe, yes. Hardly anyone does those.   

From my  Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, gifted to me as a wedding present, I found the recipe I had always used for such. Someday I’m going to make those gingerbread  cookies, I thought when I saw their cute picture.  The recipe I searched for was found on page 145 with splatters and grease stains. Aren’t all the recipes you use often like that? Back in the day, I remember Mrs. Ellis (Betty Ellis Canter) in our home economics class telling us to get a cookbook stand so this doesn’t happen. Well, sorry,  Mrs. Ellis I never did and my pages are a mess just like you warned they would be.  Then too, each time I am assembling the ingredients I hear Mrs. Ellis also saying, “Don’t measure your salt and sugar and vanilla and ingredients over the bowl or you might over pour and mess the whole thing up.” Well, sometimes I start to do so, until  I hear her voice in my head and then I don’t. That has been over four decades ago and I still hear her loud and clear, God rest her soul.

Anyhow, I have snacked on these yummy peanut butter cookies all week with a cup of coffee. (I kid myself  with each cookie that I am  getting protein and hydrating at the same time, right!) So here’s the recipe. I hope you will resurrect this old time favorite. 

Sherry’s Staircase

Peanut Butter Cookies (An Old Favorite)

½ cup shortening (half butter)

½ cup peanut butter

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup brown sugar (packed)

1 egg

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

¾ teaspoon soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

Mix thoroughly shortening, peanut butter, sugar and egg. Blend in remaining ingredients.

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Shape dough into 1” balls. To flatten use a fork in a crisscross pattern. Dip fork in flour if it sticks. Bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly brown, set but not hard. Makes about 3 dozen small cookies.  Delicious!

As each guest left that evening with a Christmas ornament, some melt in your mouth, Lindor chocolates, and  a plate of variety cookies,  we felt blessed to have each and everyone gifting their talents here at the farm being  a blessing to all the kids that walk up that drive way. And you my dear friends and my readers are a blessing to me. For that I am thankful.  Take Joy!