Peanut Butter Cookies

I love recipes where you read them, think they sound good, and find out you have all the ingredients.  I guess that could be considered one of those life surprises when things work out when you weren't expecting it to.  The day that Amy, The Nifty Foodie posted these, I realized I hadn't had Peanut Butter Cookies in a long time and they sounded fantastic, and lo and behold I had all the ingredients.

Peanut Butter Cookies
slightly adapted from The Nifty Foodie
Ingredients

1/3 cup vegetable shortening

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup smooth peanut butter

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar for topping

Directions
1) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
2) In a mixing bowl, combine the shortening, sugars, egg, vanilla, and peanut butter until the mixture is smooth.
3) Scrape down the bowl, and add the flour, baking soda, and salt to the wet mixture.  Beat slowly until dough is just combined.  This is a dry dough, so it could take awhile to mix.  If the dough seems too crumbly, add a little water at a time until the dough is no longer crumbly.
4) Using a scoop, drop the cookie dough onto your baking sheet, leaving 2 inches between each cookie. 
5) Take a fork and flatten the cookie to a 1/2 inch thickness, making a cross-hatch type of design.
6) Sprinkle the top of each cookie with a few granules of sugar.
7) Bake the cookies 12-16 minutes, until they just start to brown around the edges.  The tops will not brown at this point. 

My husband absolutely loved these cookies.  My first batch was definitely a little too crumbly and came out with a lot of cracks, so I added about a teaspoon of water, and the second batch came out perfectly.