Bigly Peanut Butter Cookies

Folks. FOLKS. We're doing peanut butter cookies, and these are the ones. The tremendous ones. The bigly ones. The ones that will make every other peanut butter cookie in your life look like a stale rice cake that someone forgot in a glove compartment in August. I've had peanut butter cookies on four continents — FOUR — and most of them are sad, dry, sandy little hockey pucks that crumble into your lap the moment you bite them. A national embarrassment. Worldwide embarrassment, actually, the whole planet is failing at peanut butter cookies and I am the only one talking about it.

Not these. These are SOFT. These are CHEWY. These have that beautiful crisscross fork pattern on top — and yes, you have to do the fork pattern, that's not optional, the fork pattern is the LAW, it's been the law since 1936 when some unsung genius at a flour company figured out that peanut butter cookies don't spread on their own and you have to flatten them. That person is a hero. I'd give them a medal. I give medals all the time. I have a drawer full of medals — these cookies are loaded with so much peanut butter you'll think you went too far. You didn't. You can't go too far. There is no 'too much peanut butter.' That's a lie told to you by Big Almond. Don't fall for it.

The secret is real peanut butter, brown sugar for chew, and pulling them out of the oven BEFORE they look done. Underbaked is the way. Underbaked is the answer. The cookie continues to cook on the pan — and this isn't me talking, this is food chemists, very smart people, the smartest, I had statisticians run the numbers, they came back to me with a chart, a beautiful chart, and they said, Bigly, the residual heat from the sheet pan finishes the bake every time. I said I know. I've been saying that. But it's nice to have it confirmed. Believe me.

That's it. That's the peanut butter cookie. The bigly one. Stack them, eat them, dunk them in a tall glass of cold milk — and yes, COLD milk, room temp milk is for sociopaths — and feel something. Feel joy. Feel the warm chewy peanut butter joy that other so-called bakers have been getting wrong for decades. You're not getting it wrong. You have the Bigly recipe. Go forth. Bake. Don't say I never gave you anything.