Peanut butter cookies

I tend to feel really guilty after baking because of the amount of butter that seems to be required for most anything tasty. Because of this I started wondering what I could do to limit the butter in my recipes, I had been reading through all sorts of cooking/baking/etc articles and blogs working on ideas for future posts and I came across one that was about making your own butter (you can expect a future post). You basically start with cream and mix it forever and hooray you've got butter. I use heavy cream when I make frosting so I had some in the fridge and decided to try it with the snickerdoodles I made last week. It worked out great! The cookies were delicious and extra rich, so I tried again with the peanut butter cookies. These turned out to be the best peanut butter cookies I've ever had. I substitute out half the butter and replace it with half that amount of heavy cream ( 1 cup of butter becomes 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup heavy cream). Now, I know these won't be significantly less fatty, if at all, but the deliciousness more than makes up for it.

Ingredients:
2 cups Flour
1 stick butter (1/2 c)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 cup peanut butter (I tried with both the natural kind and the processed kind, both work, but the natural kind is 10x better)
1 egg
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Cut your butter into small pats and put it in your mixing bowl with the sugars,egg,and vanilla
3. In a seperate container microwave your peanut butter for 15 seconds, then mix it up with a fork, (remove the fork of course) and microwave again, repeating until it is all warmed
4. Add the peanut butter to your mixing bowl and beat on high for 2 minutes.
5. Now switch to a dough hook or mix by hand and add in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
6. Once the dough has formed, use a cookie baller or two spoons to separate out inch wide balls and plop them on to your parchment lined cookie sheet.
7. Use a wetted fork to press crisscrosses into the top before baking for 8-10 minutes
8. They'll come out a little puffy, but if you let them cool for a few minutes they'll settle.

Everyone loved these, grandmothers, candle party guests, tutors, husbands, even picky little brothers, very popular cookies.