Dairy Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies... Oh My

                                                  

Rationale:

I am lucky enough to have at least TWO awesome peanut butter lovers in my life! We want to keep them happy and me safe, so it is dairy free peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for the win. I hypothesized that adding chocolate chips to a peanut butter cookie recipe would take these cookies from great to amazing. 

Methodology:

Source: https://food52.com/recipes/15242-peanut-butter-cookies

Procedures, dairy-free adaptations, and other modifications:

1. Gather ingredients. 

Dairy-free substitutions included:

• Butter was substituted with Imperial brand margarine stick
• Addition of Trader Joe's brand semi-sweet chocolate chips

2. Mix peanut butter and "butter" until smooth. 

Dairy-free modifications:

Often, recipes will call for softened butter. I rarely find this to be necessary with dairy-free substitutions. Typically, cutting them into chunks works just fine for blending. 

3. Whip in the sugars for 3 minutes. I can confirm that it really seemed to affect the texture and temperature.

 

4. Beat in your egg and vanilla.

 

5. Add in your flour and remaining dry ingredients. I really liked how the instructions didn't pretend that you need more than one bowl for this. Once again, I do recommend covering your bowl before you mix in the flour. But do make sure to peek, because you want to stop the mixer as soon as most of the flour is incorporated. 

 

6. If you're anything like me, add in those chocolate chips, measuring with your heart. 

Note: I meant to keep some dough plain for comparison, but forgot. I don't have too many regrets. 

7. The recipe provides both options of dropping the cookies and baking immediately, or chilling the dough before shaping and baking. My dough was VERY soft at this point, so I opted for chilling, maxing, relaxing all cool for a couple of hours. 

8. Then we shape and bake. Finally feeling like a scientist, I tried two variations on shaping. For both, I used my cookie scoop to attempt to get round cookies of even size. With my second batch, I attempted the fork tine press to get the distinctive markings of a peanut butter cookie. The recipe included the tip of brushing the tines of the fork in flour to keep it from sticking.

                                    

 

Results.

The recipe yielded over 2 dozen delicious peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

The first control batch yielded results as predicted (see below).

    Fresh out of the oven.                                 Cooled and deflated slightly.

Contrary to initial hypotheses, the batch in which the cross-marks were embossed onto the cookies did not yield as aesthetically pleasing results. To be clear, they were still delicious. 

     

    Fresh outta oven.                                                Cool.    

Discussion

Overall, results demonstrated that peanut butter cookies can easily be made without dairy, and that adding chocolate chips is rarely (maybe never?) a bad idea. 

"Can I have another cookie please?" - One reviewer, age 3.5

"These are really good." - Another reviewer, mid-thirties 

Unfortunately, interpretation of results was somewhat limited by lack of a true control group due to experimenter error. However, it was learned that the cross-hatch marks did not yield an aesthetically pleasing result as hoped. 

It is possible that either the substitution of dairy-free margarine for the butter, or the addition of chocolate chips, contributed to the surprising spread of the cookie dough. The result was a still chewy, but slightly thinner cookie than anticipated.

Future research may benefit from replication of these procedures with the addition of briefly freezing the shaped cookie dough before baking. Future research may explore additional add-ins, such as white chocolate, sprinkles, pretzels, nuts, and dried fruit, or creating sandwich cookies filled with frosting. Future research will certainly benefit from replication, period.