Pantry Raid: Cookie Edition

Hey Alton Brown here in the now almost completely deserted good eats Test Kitchen Hey they closed all the schools so all those kids are home so you're gonna need some cookies right just to keep them quiet you know come on so this is kind of a good news/bad news cookie the good news is incredibly simple made with very few ingredients that you probably have sitting in your pantry right now also good news gluten free all right there's no flour in this I'm not I don't really care about that but I know that a lot of people do the bad news is if you're allergic to peanuts and I know a lot of kids like my daughter are well you can't have these but I'm not allergic to peanut butter or peanuts so that means I can eat more of these and there's the good news although that's just gonna make me fat so that's bad okay let's just make cookies so I have a peanut butter 268 grams smooth peanut butter it's just Jeff okay nothing special it's just somebody will pick that out I also have two different sugars light brown sugar and regular granulated sugar 120 grams of each that would basically be half a cup of each but of course the brown sugar would be packed and I really don't like measuring that way because one person's fact is another person's semi unpacked so let's just go 120 grams I have one egg we're also going to use one teaspoon of baking soda one teaspoon of vanilla extract and a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt I arrange things very often from the higher amount to the lower amount because it helps me to memorize the recipes which I like to do so 268 121 1-1 1/4 great all right now the oven I have set to 350 degrees Fahrenheit yes we could do that in metric but I'm not thinking that way yet so let's just say 350 rack is in the middle the only tools that we're going to need bowl for mixing and some mixing utensils we're gonna go old-school with just the the wooden spoon and I'm also going to use a Disher to distribute these I want one ounce portions I'm going to them and see if I hit one ounce but having a Disher is gonna make that a lot easier and I've got a little spatula because this stuff is sticky and you need a spatula when stuff is sticky so the first thing that we're going to do peanut butter goes in first please don't make any jokes about how that looks there we go the sugar both sugars go in and then just kind of work this around I suggest you make children that's my suggestion is you make children do this and I would say that you know it's all about teaching them to value things and that if you want the cookie you I don't have to make the cookie but really it's just about making them do work so that you can go off and do something else like the good old days when we made children to do work around the farm same thing now that they're home and in your face all day long all day long they should have to do something all right now here I'm gonna scrape off my spoon see you always need a spatula always need a little rubber spatula and I'm gonna work this now we're just kind of at the back of the spoon and this is almost like imitating the creaming method where you're kind of punching holes and the peanut butter they're gonna make a hole for the egg now is a good time to also add the baking soda this is not baking powder this is baking soda one teaspoon go I'm also gonna add a teaspoon of vanilla extract don't do that over the bowl just in case you spill it there we go last thing is the salt we're only gonna go with a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt and stir to combine and we want this really smooth let's just fast-forward through this part and that is what your dough should look like at this point this could be refrigerated for you know what who cares we would make cookies right away wouldn't wait to do so we're gonna need two cookie pants or two sheet pans these are half sheet pans we use a lot of these here and in the good eats Test Kitchen because we like them and they're cheap and they're aluminum so we're gonna put only eight cookies on each of these because there is a fair amount of spread and as I said I have a one ounce by volume Disher which is wrong that's one ounce by volume this is heavier I'm just now remembering when I wrote this recipe so I'm gonna switch that out yeah this will be better this is a one and a half tablespoon which should be about an ounce by weight let's see if that works out so all I'm gonna do is dose these out try to get the spacing right one two I know it doesn't look like a lot but these things do spread and I want to give them room to do so see if I've got this dosed properly let's just fast-forward through this part Wow well that pretty much worked out I'll lick this out when you're not watching okay now time to give these cookies their distinctive look and for that we need a fork let's see I've got a few choices here the tine marks are gonna matter so you know what I think I'm gonna go I'm gonna go with this one because it has narrower tines with a little more space make a nicer texture on the the cookie so I'm just gonna start over here and mash down and then kind of swipe like that I'm gonna do them all in one direction and then I'll come back and do them in the other direction now I don't mind them being a little on the rustic side if you want yours to be perfectly smooth then you could take the balls and make them all perfect and pretty before you mash the cookies I don't really care about that kind of thing so I'm not going to I like mine to look a little sloppy now notice I'm not just picking up the fork that would make a mess I'm kind of sliding it all right you shouldn't need to use any flour or anything like this like that if you do this properly I know some folks like to bake on those silicone mats are so Pat's as we call them I don't like this for these cookies I think they spread to much so go with parchment paper which it's not the same as wax paper don't use the wax paper that'll be like making crayons that's very different okay now I'm going the other way with the fork to make the famous crosshatch peanut butter cookie pattern that has been famous for pretty much ever ultimately you're looking for a diameter of uh I'd say that one's just about perfect so it's about just at two and a half inches across metal ruler in the kitchen very very valuable because especially if like somebody reaches for a cookie when it's not ready yet again not picking up sliding all right into the 350 degree oven I want to shoot for the middle of the box these will not fit - to Iraq so I'm gonna put one on the top middle and one on the lower middle if that makes any sense the middle as quickly as possible so we don't let any heat out any more than we need to and I'm going to set my timer for a mere 10 minutes that's all it's gonna take okay sliding them off the pan that early might be a mistake I think I'll let these cool for a second on the rack before I slide them off those are those are gonna go to the bad children simply allow the cookies to cool on the parchment on top of cooling racks for efficiency for about 10 minutes before devouring Wow that's a darn fine cookie and it doesn't have any gluten in it and it's got almost no ingredients in it and you've probably already got this stuff already in the pantry I'll just save this for later as for all of these let's just say now I can control all the children not coughing [Music]

Channel: Alton Brown

Views: 1,173,755

Rating: 4.9653649 out of 5

Keywords: Alton Brown, Good Eats, Pantry Raid, COokies, Peanut Butter Cookies, recipe, cooking, food

Id: 0nalyEGpuSs

Length: 8min 56sec (536 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/HaLilSundy]

Totally flour free

[u/AggressiveRedPanda]

Gee Alton, how do you really feel about children? Lol