No Bread? Oh, Well Here's a Cookie

So I haven't purchased bread for my home in the last month. I've been relying solely on tortillas for sweet tofurkey and provolone roll-ups. Today's even featured some basil from my Aerogarden. Hot Dog! See, I'm already off on a tangent.

I was at the fancy grocery store and  I was swindled by the option of grinding my own almond butter. Not only does this machine have an old fashioned look with a fancy hopper that holds oodles of delicious slivered almonds, but the store also places this contraption in the middle of the produce section so that you feel as though they health benefits of this product will outweigh the fact that it is stupidly expensive. Apparently, that's all I needed, because I ended up coming home with a container of almond butter. I took it out of the bag and I realized that I haven't eaten a sandwich in over a month. What in blue blazes am I going to do with all of this almond butter? I mean, it's delicious on a banana, but not an entire container's worth.

I haven't baked in a while, so I set my skills (and my Kitchen Aid Mixer) to work and I made some delicious Almond Butter Cookies (excuse the slightly crappy photos. My new camera needs batteries). After finding a recipe online, I altered the ingredients a little to fit the ingredients on-hand, used some of the tricks from my grandmother's peanut butter cookie recipe, and came up with this recipe.

1 Cup Butter

1 Cup Almond Butter

1/2 Cup Peanut Butter with Honey

1 Cup White Sugar

1 Cup packed Brown Sugar

2 Eggs

2 3/4 Cups Flour

1 Teaspoon Baking Powder

1/2 Teaspoon Salt

1 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda

1 Teaspoon Vanilla

Cream Together butter, almond butter, peanut butter, vanilla and sugars until fluffy (this takes a long time, so don't skimp on the beating. It makes a big difference in the end product). Beat in eggs. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and mix those ingredients into the batter. Refrigerate for one hour. Roll 1" balls into white sugar and make cross-hatch pattern with a fork. Bake @ 350 for 9-10 minutes or until golden brown.

One thing that adding extra flour did not compensate for was Almond Butter's oily consistency and this caused some of the batches to spread a great deal. No worries! These first batches are a little crispier and will suit the tastes of those that must have coffee with cookies.

I skipped cross-hatching the other batches, only put sugar on the tops of the cookies (for a crackled look), and piled them high! With a longer cooking time, they turned out nicely. It's almost as if I got two different kinds of cookies from the same batter.

Now, I can't be sure that my solution to not eating sandwiches is really solved by making what is essentially a sugar cookie rolled in sugar (in fact, I fairly positive it doesn't), but they're quite delicious. The Almond butter has a lovely flavor and the ground up almonds give the cookies a really fancy look that sets them apart from the traditional recipe that uses only creamy peanut butter.

Happy Baking!