Peanut Butter Pecan Praline Cookies

 exclusively Skirt in the Kitchen

This is another version of my mother’s peanut butter cookie recipe.  We change it up from time to time, she mainly does, along with my spin on the cookie.  I love the Spelt Peanut Butter Cookies we did; now we’ve got a new one.  She decided to put pecans in this one, oatmeal, too.  I chose to grind the nuts into a dry pecan paste, then add molasses to the batter.  These are made large, 6 inches in diameter, baked.  I like how old-fashioned these are with an update, and I like how the whole pecans are toasted in the centers during the baking process, not being in the oven too long for the pecans to burn or get too toasted.  The pecans tend to have a caramel-praline taste with the peanut butter, molasses, and the sprinkled sugar on top for the finishing touch.  The peanut butter cookie is our signature cookie (hers) even though the first kind of cookie that she taught me to bake was oatmeal and raisin when I was a child.  This happens to be my children’s favorite flavor of cookie from my mother, now mine, because of the many peanut butter cookies she’s baked for them through the years that they fondly remember.

My husband loves the Snickerdoodle cookie that his mother and her mother made for him when he was a boy; and every so often, for our children; so they relate the Snickerdoodle cookie to them.  His paternal grandmother– creamy-yolked deviled eggs.

Thinking of food in general, what I recall mostly of my maternal grandmother was her strawberry shortcake even though she baked sunday dinner cakes from time to time but there was a summer when she made us homemade strawberry shortcake practically all summer long.  My paternal grandmother, I would say it was her hamburgers that she fried with dills in a sandwich in the summer with plenty of ketchup.  She would also make a stewed tomato-bread dish with sugar.  She always served her stewed tomatoes in a particular bowl, the same cream-colored heavy bowl with an orange-red and black print, a floral pattern on the sides.  I’ve tried to find antique bowls identical to the ones that both my grandmothers baked cakes with, mixed in, and served meals in.  I have found and purchased a few along the way.  It’s like seeing their bowls in person again every time I reach for one from the cupboard.  It’s a warm feeling that never leaves me.

What do you remember about your grandmothers, what they made the most of when you were growing up?  What takes you back in the way of a signature dish or a favorite cookie?

 (This does not have baking soda, baking powder or salt added…  A Note– in her original recipe, butter-flavored shortening is used; in the Spelt cookies, unsalted butter; in these, white shortening.)

Preheat oven to 350˚.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Cream together 1 cup white shortening, 1 cup creamy Jiff brand peanut butter, 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar, 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar, and 1/4 cup dark molasses– but add the molasses after everything mentioned has been creamed together well.

 In a separate bowl, blend 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 cup Quaker Oats 100% Natural whole Grain Old Fashioned oats, and 1/2 cup finely ground (somewhat of a paste) pecans– it aids in the texture and body as well as having a nutty flavor without having the texture of nuts for this particular cookie.  Stir dry ingredients into cookie batter with a thick spatula or heavy spoon to incorporate well.

 

 With 1/2 cup portions, roll into balls, then flatten slightly with a fork.  Since these are large even before baking, use the fork all the way around the cookie– in the corners as well as criss-crossing.  Sprinkle with sugar.  

 Press 1/2 of a pecan in each center.  Bake until just set with edges lightly browned and golden.  Leave cookies on the parchment-lined sheet when out of the oven so they do not fall apart when moving; allow to set more firmly before transferring.  Sprinkle with more granulated sugar; sugar will melt onto pecans.