Peanut Butter Shortbread Cookies

The Seattle area and the Eastside, where I live, keeps growing and growing. Older complexes are torn down and rebuilt as mixed retail and apartments. While I think it brings a lot of unneeded density, the new complexes often have interesting restaurants and bakeries to explore. My husband and I recently visited one of these rebuilt places and found a very interesting bakery.

One of the items that they had for sell was a peanut butter shortbread cookie. I will admit that it looked like a regular peanut butter cookie, but I was curious how it would be different. We purchased one and when we ate it later it was a peanut butter cookie, but crumbly like shortbread. My husband found a couple of recipes online, and I decided I would give it a try.

The recipe I chose was super simple, and you bake the cookies in a muffin pan. The original recipe contained chocolate chunks, but also gave the option to use something else or leave the mix-ins out completely. My first thought was to use peanut butter chips, to keep it all peanut butter, but I was out of those. I ended up using toffee bits, which is mainly toffee with a tiny bit of chocolate. These cookies bake beautifully, perfectly round, with a slight crumbliness due to the nature of shortbread. These do taste like peanut butter, but it isn’t the strongest flavor. But there is always the option to add more peanut butter!

Peanut Butter Shortbread Cookies
¾ cup butter, room temperature
⅓ cup creamy peanut butter
⅔ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
4 ounces mix-ins (chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, toffee bits)
Sanding sugar

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray two 12-cup muffin pans with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter, peanut butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Stir on medium-low until the mixture is smooth. With the mixer running on low, stir in the flour.  Add whatever mix-ins you are using, folding in with a spatula.  

Divide the dough into the 24 pieces and press in the bottom of the prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle the cookies with sanding sugar.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden. Allow the cookies to cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Run a thin, flat knife around the edges of the cookies to help remove them from the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Recipe from The Café Sucre Farine