Peanut Butter Pretzel Cookies
Makes 24 cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups mini salted pretzels, hand-broken
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 stick unsalted butter, cold & cut into pieces
- 2 cups light brown sugar, firmly packed
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- kosher salt for sprinkling
Special Equipment
- stand or electric hand mixer
- baking sheet
- cookie or ice cream scoop #20
- Silpat or parchment paper
- nonstick cooking spray (if not using Silpat or parchment paper)
How-to
- Preheat oven to 300º
- Break pretzels by hand into small pieces (about 6 pieces per pretzel). Be careful not to crush the pretzels, leaving as much hard outside layer intact as possible
- In a bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and pretzel pieces. Set aside
- With a stand or electric hand mixer, cream butter, sugar together, and peanut butter on medium speed until smooth and no butter pieces are visible, about 2 minutes. Turn off mixer and scrape down sides of bowl
- With mixer on medium speed, add eggs, one at time, and vanilla extract. Mix until combined. Scrape down bowl, and turn mixer up to medium-high speed. Mix 2 more minutes, until light and fluffy
- Add dry ingredients to mixing bowl all at once. Mix on low speed briefly, to incorporate most of flour. Finish mixing by hand. The dough will be sticky
- Refrigerate dough for 20 minutes until firm and form-able. Using a small ice cream scoop (#20-size yellow scoop) or heaping tablespoon, form cookies into balls, then flatten slightly into discs with the palm of your hand (about 1½" diameter and ½" thick)
- Space 6-8 cookies evenly on a parchment or Silpat-lined baking sheet. You can also spray a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray
- Sprinkle tops generously with kosher salt
- Bake cookies for 14-16 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through baking to assure even cooking, until golden in color. Cookies may look slightly under-baked when removed. This is OK, as they will continue cooking slightly on the baking sheet