1-2-3-4 Peanut Butter Cookies

Rose is in a speech class in college. She has to make a persuasive speech and eschews the other very serious topics others have spoken about. For one thing, she's in a fine arts college and astutely notes, "You already know which side they're going to be on for those issues in our school and no one ever changes their mind on that stuff from those kind of speeches."

She went on, "I want to lighten it up. I want to talk them into baking. Everyone should bake. It will improve their lives."

No kidding.

Issues come and issues go. Meanwhile, cooking and baking continue in the background to improve lives, families, and ... dare I say it ... to restore our souls in this increasingly jaded world.

She will be touching on the fact that baking frozen lumps of cookie dough from a bag is not baking. That is merely being a technician. As well, she'll be informing classmates on the superiority in taste, health, quality, price, etc. of homemade versus store bought.

Here's the recipe she's going to give her classmates at the end of the speech. It is from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. It has the unique quality of being a cookie recipe with no flour in it. Both easy and delicious, I recall well when Rose baked these for us. I recommend you bake a batch for yourselves.

1-2-3-4 Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup (9-1/2 ounces) creamy or chunky peanut butter
1 large egg
1 cup (7 ounces) sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment (for easier cleanup, but sheets can be left unlined, and ungreased, if you prefer).

In a medium-sized bowl, beat together the peanut butter, egg, sugar and baking soda until smooth. Drop the dough by the teaspoonful onto the prepared baking sheet.

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes, or until they appear set. Remove them from the oven and cool on the pan for 5 minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.