Salted Peanut Cookies

If you're a peanut butter cookie lover, then you'll want to try these Salted Peanut Cookies from a vintage recipe. The strong peanut butter flavor is derived entirely from the peanuts, which also add a lovely texture to the cookies. The sugar coating on top is the icing on the cake, so to speak.

Like most cookies, the batter is a cinch to whip up (providing you've left the butter to soften on the counter). The time suck comes from baking sheet after sheet of these. But you can always bake what you need (as I did for a dinner that night) and leave the dough in the refrigerator to bake at your leisure.

(Full disclosure: I am not a fan of peanut butter cookies at all, mostly because of their crumbly texture, but found these absolutely addicting!)

Mix the peanuts in at the end.

Using your hands, roll into one-inch balls. I always wear gloves for this task, but there's no need to.

Press the cookies down with the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in water and then sugar. I skipped this part, just sprinkling sugar on the cookies, and the results were not as good.

Bake until the bottoms are medium brown.

Voila!

Production notes: I used all butter and light brown sugar. Do not overbake, as they harden while they cool. These don't spread much on the sheet, so you can bake a lot at one time.

Impossible Pie

What if you could create a luscious coconut custard pie simply by blending together some common ingredients? Impossible, you say?
It is possible and that's the beauty of this vintage recipe called, appropriately enough, Impossible Pie. It's truly simple and quick and foolproof, a wonderful shortcut without using any real shortcuts (i.e., processed ingredients that wouldn't be found in your grandmother's pantry).

The mis-en-place is below. You probably have all the ingredients in your kitchen.

Blend everything together, except the coconut, which is added at the end.

Pour into a greased pie plate and bake in a preheated oven.

And voila!

Production notes: I followed this exactly, and made sure the butter was very soft, Place the filled pie plate on a larger tray before baking, to prevent spillage in the oven. There was a crust at the bottom, but because I didn't use a metal pie pan, it wasn't as pronounced as it could have been. I also baked a few minutes longer than recommended, as the pie seemed rather jiggly at 45 minutes.