Salty-Sweet Peanut Butter Sandies

By Julia Moskin

Salty-Sweet Peanut Butter Sandies
Soo-Jeong Kang/The New York Times
Total Time
1 hour
Rating
5(3,237)
Comments
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This modern classic is reverse-engineered from a cult cookie at City Bakery in Manhattan. They are saltier, richer and tangier than the usual crisscross rounds, thanks to updated ingredients like sea salt, cultured butter and brown sugar. And like any good “sandy” cookie, they have a soft, crumbly texture that melts away on first bite.

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Ingredients

Yield:3 to 4 dozen
  • 1cup/228 grams/2 sticks unsalted butter, preferably cultured, softened at room temperature
  • ¾cup/150 grams granulated sugar
  • ¾cup (packed)/170 grams light brown sugar
  • 1heaping teaspoon/6 grams kosher salt
  • 2cups/510 grams unsweetened peanut butter, creamy or chunky
  • 2eggs, at room temperature
  • 2cups/250 grams all-purpose flour
  • Flaky sea salt and coarse sugar for sprinkling (or use kosher salt and granulated sugar)
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (42 servings)

167 calories; 11 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 4 grams monounsaturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 15 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 9 grams sugars; 4 grams protein; 78 milligrams sodium

Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

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Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Heat oven to 350 degrees and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or nonstick liners. In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars until smooth and fluffy, at least 3 minutes. Add the peanut butter and eggs, and mix. Add the flour and salt and mix just until well combined, with no white flour showing.

  2. Step 2

    Using a small cookie scoop (about 2 teaspoons capacity), scoop dough onto prepared pans. The tops will be rounded but craggy. The cookies will not spread much or change shape when they bake, so they can be placed quite close together, but leave room for air circulation so they can brown.

  3. Step 3

    In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons sugar with 1 tablespoon salt. Sprinkle each cookie lightly with sugar-salt mixture, getting it into the crags and crannies. Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until cookies are set and golden-brown. Carefully lift or slide off baking sheets and cool on racks. Store in layers separated by parchment paper, in airtight containers.

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Ratings

5 out of 5
3,237 user ratings
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Comments

Roberta

One of my loves is peanut butter and chocolate so I could not resist adding mini-chocolate chips. Oh, my! This is the cookie you create in secret when no one is home and then hide the plastic container in the freezer under containers of frozen butternut squash soup and bags of frozen peas so they are safe and secure from anyone finding them.

Judi

Try using turbinado sugar in this instead of the granulated sugar, and cutting down each sugar by 2T...I did, and it made these even closer to the City Bakery gems I remember. I have made this with Smucker's Natural (which someone left at the house) and with Koeze Cream-Nut (which I order by the case from Zingerman's). There is no wrong peanut butter for this recipe. A keeper.

VON ALLEN

Made this recipe exactly, including the cultured butter and rounded shape. Frankly, I'm a little tired of the flat cross-hatch thing going on. At 12 minutes, the result was not a crispy cookie, but a firm rich shortbread with a buttery, dense center that melts in your mouth. Next day I shared withs friends. One respected taster bit into her cookie mid conversation. Eyes widened, she said "Oh my!" Indeed. Don't know if my waistline can handle another batch anytime soon.

Lundiga

I dialed down the sugar by 2 tablespoons as a couple of reviewers recommended and frankly could have dialed it down 1 more tablespoon. The cookie is amazing but a little too sweet for my taste. Will make them again as soon as I figure out how to scoop the dough. 2 teaspoons sounds way to small and 2 tablespoons was too big. Ended up using my hands and that was a mess. Maybe 2 teaspoons is the right amount and I need to buy a little scoop though I don’t know how you would get it out of the scoop anyway. It’s a very sticky wet dough-batter.

Cat Jones

Made these, and by god are they delicious. I don't know where you get coarse sugar, so i'd like to try to find that, but granulated and kosher salt worked okay. I'm a little confused by your cookie measuring, though. 2 TEASPOONS per cookie? And you think we're only gonna get 3-4 dozen? There's 48 teaspoons in a single cup of anything. 48. That's 2 dozen '2-tsp cookie scoop' servings. And really, really tiny cookies. I went with 2 TBS per cookie and I still ended up with between 5-6 dozen.

Lisa

I have a jar of natural PB that's unusually runny. Saved it to make things like peanut sauce. Do you think it would hinder the recipe to use it for these cookies?

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