Peanut butter and chocolate- what’s not to love? When you combine those in the form of a cookie that is both flourless and butterless… and uses all natural ingredients- and only 5 of them, at that… well, life gets peachy (and yes, that was a terribly-structured run-on). Happiness takes on an all-new form in these cookies that- I’m almost ashamed to say- are mildly adapted from a recipe of Paula Deen’s. It’s true- she at times will make something that won’t fill your arteries in semblance to Houston’s highways.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Mildly Adapted from Peanut Butter Cookies by Paula Deen

The only changes I made were as follows:

• I used Skippy Naturals creamy smooth peanut butter (no-stir, it’s fantastic) as opposed to your usual high-fructose-corn-syrup-ladden variety
• I added 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract to the dough prior to first mixing
• As the sugar requirement ambiguously stated “sugar” without clarification, I opted to diversify my “portfolio” and used 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar, 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• I chopped 3/4 of a Hershey’s Symphony tablet into small chunks which I mixed into the dough right before forming into balls to bake
• My oven- which usually is on the hot side- took about 23 minutes to bake the cookies, not 10… so be warned that the 10 may be far too conservative.

For the rest, I honestly followed the recipe as-is and it produced splended results. Mine don’t look a thing like her picture, but that doesn’t detract from the superb flavour and texture! They’re really delicious, very quick, and perfect for when you’d like to make cookies but have few ingredients on hand.