Three-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

Every baking blog wants you to believe cookies require creaming, chilling, weighing, and a stand mixer named Gerald. Meanwhile, this recipe has been quietly making perfect cookies out of three ingredients since before Gerald was a gleam in a marketing department’s eye.

No flour. No butter, even. Peanut butter, sugar, one egg — and a fork pattern on top that makes people think you know things. You will know things, dear. Three of them.

What You Need

• 1 cup (about 250 g) of peanut butter — smooth or crunchy, your call; the ordinary supermarket kind works best here, as the fancy “just peanuts” sort makes crumblier cookies
• 1 cup (about 200 g) of sugar — plain white sugar
• 1 egg

Kit

• A mixing bowl
• A sturdy spoon (the dough gets thick — a workout is included free)
• A baking tray
• Baking paper (parchment, my American darlings) — or a light greasing of butter on the tray
• A fork, for the famous criss-cross
• Oven gloves and a cooling spot

What You Do

1. Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and line your tray with baking paper. Ovens need 10 minutes to be honest about their temperature, so do this first.
2. Crack the egg into the bowl and beat it briefly with your fork until yolk and white are one.
3. Add the peanut butter and sugar and mix with your sturdy spoon until it becomes one thick, even dough with no streaks of egg. It’ll fight you near the end — that’s correct. Win.
4. Roll the dough into balls about the size of a walnut (a rounded tablespoon each). You should get around 16. Slightly sticky hands are normal; damp palms help.
5. Space them out on the tray a good 5 cm (2 inches) apart. They spread a little, and cookies that have merged into one mega-cookie are a lifestyle, not a triumph.
6. Press each ball with a fork, twice, in a criss-cross — press one way, turn the fork 90 degrees, press again. Flatten them to about 1 cm (½ inch). This is the signature move. Practise your modest face.
7. Bake for 10 minutes. The edges should look set and dry, and the tops just barely golden. The middles will look soft and underdone. This is right. Do not “give them 5 more minutes to be safe” — that’s how peanut-flavoured roof tiles happen.
8. Leave them ON the tray for 10 full minutes. They come out of the oven soft as gossip and firm up as they cool. Move them too soon and they’ll crumble in your hands, and you’ll blame me. And a stern word about the raw dough, treasure: it has raw egg in it, so no sneaky licking of the spoon — the baked cookie arrives in 10 minutes, you can wait.
9. Move them to a plate or rack once they’re firm enough to lift cleanly, and let them finish cooling. Or don’t. They’re yours now.

When It All Goes Wrong

They crumbled when I picked them up. You moved them hot. They must have their 10 quiet minutes on the tray — that’s where the firming happens.

They’re hard as biscuity gravel. Overbaked. Ten minutes means ten minutes, and pale-with-set-edges is the goal, not golden-brown-all-over.

They spread into one giant cookie. Balls too big or too close together. Walnut-sized, 5 cm apart — and congratulations on your new giant cookie, which you must now eat.

The dough won’t come together. Natural “just peanuts” peanut butter can be oily and loose. Stir the jar thoroughly before measuring, or mix the dough a minute longer — it thickens as the sugar settles in.

Doris Says

Three ingredients and a fork, and suddenly you’re a baker, buttercup. Let them think it was difficult. Every good tart keeps a few secrets.