Peanut Butter Cookies: Why the Criss-Cross? (2024)

FAQs

Peanut Butter Cookies: Why the Criss-Cross? ›

Peanut butter cookie dough is denser than a lot of other cookie doughs. Putting the hash marks in the cookie dough balls actually flattens them for more even baking. Without being pressed, the cookies will not cook evenly. And nobody likes a cookie that's half burnt and half raw.

So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.

Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten with tines of fork dipped in granulated sugar, forming crisscross pattern. Bake 9 to 10 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

Chilling the dough for a few hours will help the peanut butter cookies maintain their shape, and not overly spread when cooked. Dip the fork in sugar. To help keep the fork from sticking when you make a cross-hatch pattern on the cookies, dip the tines in a little granulated sugar between cookies.

Certain cookies — Sugar Cookies, Snickerdoodles, Classic Peanut Butter Cookies — need to be flattened a bit before they bake, lest they end up emerging from the oven looking like ping-pong balls rather than typical flat, round cookies.

If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

Using too much baking soda or baking powder can really mess up a recipe, causing it to rise uncontrollably and taste terrible.

Another Success Tip: Chill the Cookie Dough

The dough is incredibly creamy, almost like peanut butter frosting, and you'll have a heck of a time trying to roll and bake such a soft dough. Set aside 1–2 hours for chilling, or do yourself a favor and make the dough the night before.

You sure can. The good news is that butter, margarine, shortening and all types of oil can be used in place of the vegetable oil in SuperMoist package directions.

It's been the “mark” of this classic treat for more than eighty years, and for good reason: by flattening this dense cookie dough, it ensures that each cookie bakes evenly. Our kitchen-tested recipe is a classic.

What if my peanut butter cookie dough is too dry? ›

Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

Unlike many other cookies, peanut butter biscuits only fully harden once they've been removed from the oven. Here's how to tell when peanut butter cookies are done: The tops of the cookies are a uniform light brown. They're soft to the touch but not moist or mushy.

If all you have on hand is foil and you don't like thin and crispy cookies, try chilling your dough before baking to prevent excess spreading — or just skip the lining altogether and bake them on an ungreased sheet pan. A nonstick silicone cookie mat made the best cookies of all the tests I tried.

You can use a fork or a dough docker to prick small holes all over the surface of the dough. By venting the steam, docking keeps the dough from billowing or heaving as it bakes. It's an important step for crisp cookies or that are baked all in a single sheet and not cut up until they come out of the oven.