Peanut-Peanut Butter Cookies with Fleur de Sel

(GIVE AWAY: Details of current Give Away is at bottom of this post and also on sidebar. Best of luck to all who enter!)

My Mom's Peanut Butter cookies were the best I have ever tasted, she and my grandmother used the same recipe for as far back as I can remember. And if your mother, aunt, or grandmother baked peanut butter cookies it is probably is the same recipe you had while growing up.

~Dirty Little Secret~

Since I live with a grown-up Cookie Monster (Mr. OUaP) I usually bake cookies every other week to keep the cookie jar ~ a fixture on the kitchen island~ filled:

Happiness is a full Cookie Jar?! Who knew?

I still make Mom's recipe for Peanut Butter cookies, except I've made them a wee bit more nutritious by subbing some of the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour, adding some non-fat dry milk to the mix, and using an old-fashioned peanut butter (non-hydrogenated.)

And I use all-butter rather than half butter & half solid shortening.

They are delicious ~ but I wanted to try something different this time.

This recipe (click) from allrecipes.com captured my attention because of the number of positive reviews it received.

I wanted to try them so I mixed up the dough according to the recipe and baked off one tray of cookies. Hmmm. To be honest, they were very good, but they didn't knock my socks off. I believe the liquid milk in the recipe slightly dulls the peanut butter flavor. However the milk is needed to achieve the proper dough consistency.

To amp up the flavor a bit I scooped the remainder of the dough onto baking sheets with a medium-size ice cream/cookie scoop, then sprinkled and pressed some chopped, lightly salted peanuts on the surface of each, flattening the cookies slightly at the same time (instead of pressing them with a fork.) I also sprinkled the very center of each cookie with a teeny bit of Fleur de Sel (flaky French sea salt.)

Ooh-la-la!!! Viva la difference! :D

Thumbs up, all the way around at my house, the slightly salty accent made the peanut flavor sing.

These probably won't replace (my slightly healthier version of) Mom's Peanut Butter cookies, but they are an interesting change. I may try Mom's recipe using the same method, I'll certainly share the results here if I do.

If you try them this way, I hope you love them.

Also ~ If you haven't entered my current Give Away it is not too late!

Click HERE for details.

Cut off for entering is Saturday, September 18th at 9PM Pacific time.

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