Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

The first thing I ever cooked as a child was flourless peanut butter cookies. I was only twelve it it had only four ingredients, peanut butter, sugar, egg and baking soda. I must have made them at least a hundred times since then, but stopped making them when I gave discovered Ray Peat and gave up PUFA’s. Six months ago I started making them again though when I decided to make them with my homemade peanut butter, made with defatted peanut powder and refined coconut oil and they turned out better than the ones I have been making all these decades.

Here is how I make them. Preheat oven to 325-degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Start by melting 6 tablespoons refined coconut oil and cool. To a mixing bowl add the cooled coconut oil with 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 cups of defatted peanut powder. Now my peanut powder has some sugar and salt mixed in, so if yours doesn’t then up your sugar maybe another 1/4 cup. Add in an egg and beat this together with an electric mixer. It will seem a little dry, but will roll together well. Finally add in one teaspoon of baking soda and mix for another ten seconds. Roll the dough into balls and place on the parchment paper. On a shallow plate pour in a couple of tablespoons of sugar. Get the back of a fork a little wet with oil and dip the fork into the sugar and push the cookie dough balls down going one way, then dip the fork again in sugar and push it down going another way making a crisscross. Some stray pieces of dough inevitably come off, but I treat it like clay and push it back onto the cookie. I like to be a little generous with the sugar when I am pressing down my dough. I was thinking about Reeces peanut butter cups and decided to top some of my cookies with some chocolate chips this time. Milk chocolate would have come closer to that famous candy, but I only had semi-sweet on hand. Bake these cookies in the oven for about 9 minutes. Cool completely before transferring the cookies to their final destination.

I love cold raspberry jelly on top of my peanut butter cookie, but I have also topped the cookies with grape jelly before baking.

“Coconut and olive oil are the only vegetable oils that are really safe, but butter and lamb fat, which are highly saturated, are generally very safe (except when the animals have been poisoned). Coconut oil is unique in its ability to prevent weight-gain or cure obesity, by stimulating metabolism. It is quickly metabolized, and functions in some ways as an antioxidant. Olive oil, though it is somewhat fattening, is less fattening than corn or soy oil, and contains an antioxidant which makes it protective against heart disease and cancer.” -Ray Peat