Easy Low Sugar Peanut Butter Cookies Gluten Free
What does this girl do when asked invited to a last minute gathering? She makes these super quick cookies.
I love my friends. This fourth of July Alan was scheduled to work leaving me with nothing to do until fireworks time. I asked around on Facebook and my friend Emily invited me to spend the day with her, her husband, and her five children. I had not been grocery shopping in a while and did not have mayo for potato salad, slaw, or any other quick fourth of July favorites. That’s when my mind turned to cookies.
I remembered a recipe for peanut butter cookies I used to make as a kid. They were quick, involved only 3 ingredients (all of which I had on hand) and would please the kids. I googled three ingredient peanut butter cookies and easily found the recipe.
It looked like it would take me 20 minute start to finish to have hot peanut buttery goodness to share at the gathering. I whipped them up and was excited to have found something so easy and crowd pleasing to bring along.
Then I removed them from the oven. Despite following the recipe exactly, the bottoms were burnt. I taste tested them and immediately noticed how overly sugary they were. The burnt flavor did not bother me nearly as much as the fact that the sugar overpowered the peanut butter flavor. I now saw the burnt cookies as a great reason to try again and lower the sugar in the recipe.
Being that the cookies called for 1 cup sugar, 1 cup peanut butter, and 1 egg, I was afraid that removing sugar would make them too gooey or sticky. I decided to replace some of the sugar with a few tablespoons of gluten free flour. I also baked this batch at a much lower temperature to prevent burning another batch.
The new cookies came out beautifully. I tasted them and was amazed. Reducing the sugar by 2/3 still resulted in a pleasantly sweet cookie. The flour added a better texture as well. You can tell the difference in texture between the cookies by looking at the photo above. Notice how some have an oily look to them and the fork marks are less defined? Those are the original recipe. The cookies that look more appetizing (to me at least) are my lower sugar recipe.
Not wanting to waste the first batch I pulled out my super secret burnt-be-gone device (aka: a butter knife) and scraped the burnt layer from the bottoms. I decided to A/B test the full sugar vs low sugar recipes on Emily’s 5 kids. I quickly realized that kids don’t care about A/B testing and just want cookies. I ended up giving them the low sugar cookies and they all loved them and begged for more. The grownups liked the low sugar variety better than the full sugar recipe as well.
I know how popular the three ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe is in most peoples kitchens. I decided to post my altered version to give you all a healthier alternative that is still just as simple to make.
- 1 cup Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter or nut butter of choice
- 1 egg
- ⅓ cup sugar
- 2 tbsp rice flour (you can probably sub any gluten free flour with similar results)
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
- Mix all ingredients in a medium mixing bowl until combined.
- Place tablespoon sized balls of dough 2 inches apart on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
- Use fork tines to flatten cookies making a crisscross pattern.
- Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Cookies will be light in color.
- Cool and enjoy!
Posted on: Gluten Free Fridays
Cindy (Vegetarian Mamma)
These look beautifully moist! Thanks for sharing them at Gluten Free Fridays!