cookies au naturale

For quite a while now, I've been jonesing for some peanut butter cookies. It all started a couple of weeks ago when I had a fantastic peanut butter and chocolate cookie at the "Our Town Cafe" on E. Broadway. For the past week, I started looking for recipes but seeing that we only use natural peanut butter in this household, finding an exact recipe where I wouldn't have to make modifications became quite the chore. Tonight I settled on one that specifically called for natural peanut butter (a real rarity in peanut butter cookie land).

The cookies are in the oven as I type and they smell pretty damn delicious! The batter is pretty stiff and greasy. Depending on how these come out, I may half the amount of butter if I decided to make these again.

Natural Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 c butter
6 T brown sugar
6 T white sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla extract
1 c natural peanut butter
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
3/4 c all-purpose flour
3/4 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Cream butter with brown and white sugars. Add egg and vanilla. Mix well. Stir in peanut butter, baking soda, and salt. Make sure it is well blended. Add flour and chocolate chips and mix to combine. Drop teaspoons of cookie dough then flatten with fork. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until it looks done. Don't overcook. Let cool on cookie sheet for 5 -10 minutes then transfer to cooling rack.

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Update: Well, the cookies turned out pretty good. They're quite filling and heavy but they are tasty. I'm interested to know of any great tried, tested and true natural peanut butter cookie recipes (or any other natural peanut butter baking recipes), so if you've got a favorite, please let me know!