I love any biscuit that contains peanut butter… love love love. I seem to be the only one in the family that does, but who cares, that just means more for me and less to share.

My mother loves cookies with nuts and chocolate chips in and my dad, well his a lost cause. His boring man, all he knows is eet sum more that’s all. Jeez he can’t even think beyond eet sum more, its plain boring butter biscuits. Just like ice cream, soo many flavours and mixtures out there and all he knows is vanilla soft serve. It makes me want to pull my hair out when I try to offer him a new flavor…..sooo stubborn.

With lock down in full swing, it means that we spend more time around each other and somehow the kitchen has become our living space and at the rate we are going, my parents might have to oil the pantry door hinges. That door gets opened more than the front door at the moment.

I try to limit my family’s need to go out to the stores during this time…meaning that this is a great opportunity to really put the creativity juices to good use and utilize every last item in the pantry.

This is just what this recipe from Sam Linsell did. It used basic pantry staples and it combined my love of peanut butter with my mother’s love of chocolate chips and seeing as my brother could not be left out. I kept about a quarter of the dough aside and made plain peanut butter biscuits for him. What with being allergic to chocolate and all, but do you think he listened? He sat staring at my mouth while I munched on the forbidden chocolate chip infused cookies.

I had to go so far as sticking my head in the cupboard and shoveling the cookies in my mouth without him seeing me. The lengths I will go through to not share a cookie.

Okay, I am not that selfish. A few days later, the soft cookies were packed into my dad’s lunch to be shared with his buddies over morning coffee… they weren’t any wiser and I was happy that I had an empty cookie tin that needed to be refilled. Everyone wins.

Other loved them, she couldn’t stop eating them. I put a plate out for all of us to enjoy and my mother kept sneaking one extra one, when no one was looking and then complained that I am making her fat. Let me just not bake for a day and then both parents complain that I haven’t baked in a long time, not sure when they will ever get goodies again… or my dad’s favourite line to use is that times are tough, he has to eat stale hot cross buns because baked goods is soo scarce.

You see what I have to put up with… one minute its fattening and the next is a scarce commodity, there is just no in between with these folks… shh don’t tell them I said that, in case they ask for my shopping slips.

The original recipe contained eggs, but I just substituted it with a vegan egg and it still came out perfect.

Ingredients:

• 100g x butter, room temperature.
• 125g x peanut butter.
• 100g x brown sugar.
• 100g x castor sugar.
• 1 x vegan egg.
• 1 x tsp vanilla essence.
• 250g x cake flour, sifted.
• 1 x tsp baking powder.
• ¼ x tsp bicarbonate of soda.
• Pinch of salt.
• 100g x chocolate chips.

Method:

• In a mixer, cream together the butter and both sugars, till light and fluffy.
• Add in the egg and vanilla essence and mix till well combined.
• Add in the cake flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and baking powder and mix till there are no flour lumps.
• Gentle fold in the chocolate chips.
• Using and ice cream scoop.
• Drop scoopfuls of the batter onto a greased baking tray. Roughly 6 scoops per cookie sheet.
• Using the bake of a fork, slightly flatten the cookies.
• Pop into a preheated and bake at 180 degrees for 10 – 15 minutes or until the bottoms are lightly golden brown.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet before placing on a cooling rack to cool completely.