I Voted

No matter which president we wake up with tomorrow, the world always needs a good peanut butter cookie recipe. I looked for one for years, and then tasted the perfect cookie at the restaurant where I worked. Luckily, the young pastry chef was nice enough to share it with me.

This one is truly the best peanut butter cookie you have ever had. The recipe is scaled down for a couple of people plus sharing at work the next day, because most people don't want to make 8 dozen cookies. We refer to it as "Cookies Dammit" because I once sent it to my friend Karen after forgetting to send it for a long time, and that was the title of the email.

I took the picture at the top on my way home from work last night.
V I S U A L I Z E P R E S I D E N T O B A M A

For a refresher course on the Electoral College and how the election process actually works, here is the Wikipedia entry about it. Especially interesting is the the fact that there have only been three times that a candidate has won the popular vote and not received all the votes in the electoral college: twice in the 1800s, and then not again until...2000.

Cookies Dammit- Small Recipe

1 stick butter- room temp if possible
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar (use less if you like)
1 egg
1 1/8 cup peanut butter, preferably natural and chunky
1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup cake or AP flour
extra 1/8 cup granulated sugar for marking

Method
Cream butter and sugars in a stand mixer or with a fork and a strong arm. (Definitely warm your butter if you are doing this by hand.)

Mix dry ingredients together in separate bowl.

When sugars are thoroughly blended with butter, add egg and vanilla. When thoroughly blended, add peanut butter.

Mix dry ingredients into bowl, just until combined.

Use two teaspoons to form cookies into roundish lumps on parchment-lined cookie sheet. Use a fork dipped in sugar to mark the classic "waffle-stomper" pattern in the cookies. Bake for ten to twelve minutes at 375 degrees, remove to racks to cool completely before placing on a plate. Best slightly underdone.

Options: Form with a small melon or ice-cream scoop for pretty, evenly round cookies. Leave the lumps as lumps and press a Hershey's kiss in the middle of each cookie. Or press a sugared thumb in the middle of each and add a teaspoon of strawberry jam for peanut-butter-and-jellies.