I've made a lot of peanut butter cookies in my time, but I was curious to try the recipe for "Five-Spice Peanut Butter Cookies" in The Cookie Collection because it was hard for me to imagine what the end product would taste like.
Except for the addition of spices, the recipe is pretty straightforward. You cream softened butter with dark brown sugar until fluffy; add an egg, followed by crunchy peanut butter and vanilla; and incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, Chinese five-spice powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and kosher salt).
The cookies had a nice, firm, chewy texture. I was afraid that the five spice might be too strong, but the cookies had a general warm spice background flavor with cinnamon in particular at the forefront (because the batter includes extra cinnamon). I'm not sure that I would be able to correctly identify five spice specifically as an ingredient in these cookies just from tasting one. But the combination of spices with peanut butter was surprisingly harmonious. I did find myself thinking that some bigger chopped pieces of salted peanuts (in addition to the small bits from the chunky peanut butter) would be a good addition to boost the peanut flavor.
I enjoyed these cookies, but they didn't blow me away. Still, they were a nice change of pace from a standard peanut butter cookie recipe.
Recipe: "Five-Spice Peanut Butter Cookies" from The Cookie Collection.
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