Peanut butter cookie facts for kids
Peanut butter cookies with peanut chunks
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| Type | Cookie |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | United States |
| Created by | George Washington Carver |
| Main ingredients | Peanut butter |
A peanut butter cookie is a yummy type of cookie that has peanut butter as its main ingredient. These popular cookies first appeared in the United States around the 1910s. Sometimes, if crunchy peanut butter is used, you might find small pieces of peanut inside!
The Story of Peanut Butter Cookies
The story of peanut butter cookies starts with a famous American scientist named George Washington Carver (1864-1943). He worked at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Dr. Carver was a big supporter of growing peanuts.
Farmers in the southern United States often grew cotton. But a tiny bug called the boll weevil was destroying their cotton crops. Dr. Carver showed farmers how to grow peanuts instead. Peanuts helped the soil and gave farmers a new crop to sell.
In 1925, Dr. Carver wrote a special guide called How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption. This guide had many recipes using peanuts. Three of these recipes were for peanut cookies, using crushed or chopped peanuts.
It wasn't until the early 1930s that recipes started to use peanut butter itself as an ingredient in these cookies.
Why Peanut Butter Cookies Have Fork Marks
Have you ever noticed the criss-cross pattern on top of a peanut butter cookie? This special design is usually made with a fork!
Long ago, peanut butter cookies were either rolled flat and cut into shapes, or just dropped onto a baking sheet. They didn't have these fork marks. The idea of using a fork first appeared in a newspaper called Schenectady Gazette on July 1, 1932.
The recipe told bakers to "shape into balls and after placing them on the cookie sheet, press each one down with a fork, first one way and then the other." This made them look like little squares, similar to waffles.
A big flour company called Pillsbury helped make the fork method popular in the 1930s. Their 1933 cookbook, Pillsbury's Balanced Recipes, also told people to press the cookies with a fork.
So, why do we use a fork? Peanut butter cookie dough is quite thick and dense. If you don't press the cookies down, they won't cook evenly. The fork helps flatten the dough, making sure the cookies bake perfectly all the way through. You could also use a cookie shovel, but a fork is super easy to use!
See also
In Spanish: Galleta de mantequilla de cacahuete para niños
