I often consider the ingredients I happen to have on hand when I select a recipe. So
when my husband bought a tub of white miso and didn't use all of it, I
decided to try a recipe for "Peanut Butter-Miso Cookies" from The New York Times.
Except for the addition of miso, the recipe is straightforward. You beat softened butter with sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy; add miso and chunky peanut butter, followed by an egg and vanilla; and gradually add the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, and baking powder). I used a #24 scoop to portion out the cookies and got 21 from a batch of dough. The dough was very, very soft. While it wasn't a problem to just drop scoops of dough onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet, I didn't want to deal with coating the soft blobs of dough in demerara sugar before chilling. So I chilled the dough first (for 24 hours) and then rolled the cookies in sugar right before baking.
You pull the cookies out of the oven partway through baking; rap the baking pan on the counter to deflate them; finish baking the cookies; and rap the pan on the counter again. As a result of the repeated deflating process, my cookies were quite flat, with wide cracks on top. They were round and uniform, with a bit of sparkle from the demerara sugar.
These cookies were incredibly, delightfully chewy. I loved the texture. As for the flavor, I'm not sure how to best describe it. To me, the cookies tasted essentially like peanut butter cookies with a a hint of some other earthy flavor that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I didn't think that the miso was identifiable as such, but my extended dough chilling time likely muted the flavor somewhat. However, one of my tasters opined that the cookies tasted strongly of miso. Another mentioned that the cookies evoked tahini. While the texture was probably better than any peanut butter cookie I've ever eaten, I can't say that the flavor is better than what you get in a straight peanut butter cookie -- but the tradeoff of giving up pure peanut butter flavor in exchange for an amazingly chewy cookie might be worth it.
Recipe: "Peanut Butter-Miso Cookies" from The New York Times.
Except for the addition of miso, the recipe is straightforward. You beat softened butter with sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy; add miso and chunky peanut butter, followed by an egg and vanilla; and gradually add the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, and baking powder). I used a #24 scoop to portion out the cookies and got 21 from a batch of dough. The dough was very, very soft. While it wasn't a problem to just drop scoops of dough onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet, I didn't want to deal with coating the soft blobs of dough in demerara sugar before chilling. So I chilled the dough first (for 24 hours) and then rolled the cookies in sugar right before baking.
You pull the cookies out of the oven partway through baking; rap the baking pan on the counter to deflate them; finish baking the cookies; and rap the pan on the counter again. As a result of the repeated deflating process, my cookies were quite flat, with wide cracks on top. They were round and uniform, with a bit of sparkle from the demerara sugar.
Recipe: "Peanut Butter-Miso Cookies" from The New York Times.
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