Multiple Warning Cookies

As fun as it is to have "secret" ingredients, today's fancy pants modern world tends to have a lot of folks with "dietary restrictions." Some of these are self-imposed, like those irritating vegans who aren't Daniel Bryan. Others folks have genuine allergies or intolerances, which makes revealing certain ingredients necessary. 

Even if you think they are whiners. 

At any rate, the following is my recipe for peanut-butter cookies. Beware peanut allergy sufferers and vegetarians. 

This recipe was reverse-engineered from legends of a family recipe, and creates a a very crumbly cookie with a rich flavor. It tastes fine plain, or with added chocolate chips.

1.  Turn on the oven to 375. 

2. You want to beat half a stick of butter until it's nice and soft. 

3. Beat into the butter 1/4 cup of bacon grease. (Did you know that there are perverts who throw away bacon grease? If you don't have any bacon grease, I suppose you could use some grease from prosciutto or pancetta.)

4. Add to this 1/2 cup of white sugar and a 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar. 

5. Mix it until it is good and creamy. 

6. Mix in an egg, 1 cup of peanut butter (I like Jif), 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and a touch of vanilla. (You want to get a sense of the flavor here, despite the risk of salmonella. If your bacon grease was good and salty, you're set. Otherwise, you'll want to mix in 1/2 teaspoon of salt.)

7. Add about 1 1/4 cups of flour to the dough and mix until combined. (If it looks oily, add up to 1/4 cup more flour. At this point, feel free to throw in some chocolate chips or chunks and fold them into the dough.)

8. You want to roll the dough into balls that are about an inch in diameter and place them onto a cookie sheet. This recipe should make about 5 dozen cookies. (If you have a seasoned cookie sheet, it wont take much grease to keep these things from sticking. Just drop in some vegetable oil, and push it around the pan with a paper towel.  If you've got nice, new cookie sheets, buy some parchment paper. Cut the paper to fit the inside of your cookie sheet, spray it with a little Pam and put the cookies on top of that.)

9. When the balls are on the cookie sheet, take a fork and use its tines to push the cookie down. Then turn the fork 90 degrees and do it again. (You can't have peanut butter cookies without those little squares on top.) 

10. Toss them into the oven for about 10 minutes or so. 

You can impress all your hipster friends with the bacon products inside your cookies! 

(I should have some photos of these from the Mosquito Song release party. Sadly, I never got those pictures from my brother-in-law.)