Natural Peanut Butter, Vegan Baggage and Cookies

In a rush, I grabbed the first peanut butter on the shelf. It was on sale. We needed peanut butter. I grabbed it...

Didn't realize until I got home, not only was it crunchy, it was natural.

I'm all for natural products. The less chemicals in my food, the better. So I thought, "What the hey" and stirred my separated oil and nuts.

Things I don't like about Natural Peanut Butter:

1. You have to stir it well. If you don't stir it well enough, you will find that when you get to the bottom of the jar it is oddly, freaky, crusty dry. 
2. There is less sugar and I like sugar. It is really noticeable in Natural Peanut Butter. To solve this problem I added jam to every peanut butter'd piece of bread I had.
3. I don't know if it is all those saturated fats but DAMN IT REALLY STICKS TO THE ROOF OF YOUR MOUTH.

I couldn't throw out the peanut butter. I resolved to bake with it.

UGH! You have to stir it before you even bake with it!

I scoured the internet for a new peanut butter recipe and found an interesting vegan one.

Vegan?!?! I just didn't know. Vegan? Tasteless, wacky, kale?  You see, I have vegan baggage.

A vegan stole my job. Another vegan I used to work with would insult me on a daily basis (I blame diet/lack of food). And the whole wool thing, honey thing really gets my goat.

But, I am open minded. I know of one vegan who is sane and a terrific person. There is hope. So I decided to try it. This recipe uses olive oil (I have never baked with olive oil despite how many recipes are out there) and good ol' natural peanut butter.

"If it doesn't taste good, I'll eat it!"

Did it work? Does it taste as good as a normal, regular, everyday peanut butter cookie?

YUPPERS! And there are very few ingredients: Maple syrup, flour, vanilla, salt, baking soda and peanut butter.

This is an important picture: the dough looks just like
a regular non-vegan recipe.

The final product: just wonderful!

A warning: Mr. B believes these cookies are dry, but I don't find them that way at all. They do stick to the roof of your mouth a bit more than a regular cookie. They are less sweet (which I remedied by sprinkling sugar on the top of them).

To try this recipe out visit the link at 101 cookbooks right here.