Peanut Butter (or other butter) Cookies with Brown Sugar

I can tell it's the middle of the winter, not only because of the bare branches and piles of snow I see outside. I can tell it's the middle of the winter because my craving for sweets has gone through the roof. Normally I have a bit of a sweet tooth, but in the winter it's like a mouthful of sweet teeth. I can spend hours looking at cookie recipes online and in my cookbooks. Fortunately, the girls enjoy helping me bake, and they really enjoy sampling the baked goods. Sabrina especially likes to pour the ingredients into the bowl and help to mix them, and Naomi likes to sit in front of the oven and watch the cookies while they're baking.

While looking through my binder of dessert recipes, I found the following variation on the usual recipe I use for making peanut butter (or other butter) cookies. The brown sugar in the following recipe gives the cookies a chewier texture and a richer flavor than the cookies containing white sugar. So if you also are experiencing mid-winter carb cravings, try out these satisfying and easy cookies.

I also found another recipe for flourless peanut butter cookies that calls for just 3/4 cup of brown sugar and no baking soda, so I'm curious to try that one and see how it turns out. But that will have to wait until the next sugar craving hits.

Peanut Butter (or other butter) Cookies with Brown Sugar
makes about 18 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1 cup of light brown sugar, packed. (Another recipe I found suggested using just 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, so I think I'll try that next time.) Try to use a brown sugar that is made from pure cane sugar without any molasses added, since molasses can sometimes be made from corn syrup. Check the ingredient list on the back of the package to be sure.
  
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. Trader Joe's alcohol-free vanilla extract. If you cannot find Trader Joe's vanilla, then try to buy an alcohol-free vanilla extract that does not contain corn syrup.
• 1 cup Natural Jif creamy peanut butter (or sunflower seed butter or almond butter)
• Optional: 1/2 cup of dairy-free chocolate chips. Look for chocolate chips that do not contain any milk fat. I use Trader Joe's semi-sweet chocolate chips, but I think that Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips may also be free of milk fat.
  

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium-size bowl, combine the egg, brown sugar, baking soda, vanilla, and peanut butter (or other butter). Then fold in the chocolate chips, if you would like to add them. Place rounded tablespoonfuls of the cookie dough on two baking sheets, leaving at least two inches between each spoonful of dough. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes. Remove the baking sheets from the oven and let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes. Then transfer the cookies onto a wire rack to cool completely.