This weekend I learned about a new blog, Gluten-Free Girl, and with it a recipe for Peanut Butter cookies entirely lacking in flour. I got quite excited, and resolved to make them. Sadly, I hit a snag. American recipes and their cup measuring tendencies. Nothing in baking confuses me more than trying to use a recipe written in cups. As far as I can tell cups contain a different amount depending on which country the recipe originates. Plus, it is a volume measure, which makes it very difficult to convert to weight. I’m afraid I have abandoned many a delicious sounding recipe due to past experiences (almost exclusively negative) that occur from accepting the idea that a cup is 8 ounces or however much someone tells me it is on that day.
So, I took a more lateral approach this time. I googled “gluten free peanut butter cookies” and while Gluten-Free Girl’s recipe came up, so did another one, happily a UK version, measuring in the grams that my kitchen equipment allows me to use reliably.
So, I now have a batch of cookies cooling in my kitchen, and I am very pleased with them. Having said that, I would do things a little different next time. I would use unsweetened peanut butter (which I usually eat anyway, but today happened to have the ordinary sweet kind). I would make the biscuits quite small. And I would cook them for ten to twelve minutes, not eight.
They are fascinating to cook, though, as when they come out of the oven they are incredibly squidgy. So much so that you have to let them cool a bit before you can even move them to a cooling rack (or, in my case, a plate which doesn’t do the job nearly as well. Must buy cooling rack!). It is only as they cool that they solidify into something recognisable as a biscuit. This is not something the version of the recipe I used tells you, although I expected it, partly from the Gluten-Free Girl recipe, and partly just because what exactly out of a peanut butter, sugar and egg combination is going to provide solidity while hot? Quite.
I will definitely make these again. They’re so sweet that I think they’re best with a cup of tea to dilute the overwhelming sweetness a bit, but they certainly douse the sugar cravings.
2 Comments
July 14, 2009 at 10:11 pm
I’ve found that I just have to own a set of measuring cups these days because there’s so many good American recipes out there.
July 14, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I have thought about this, but I also use Australian recipes and Australian cups and US cups are different! I don’t really want to have two sets of measuring cups!