FLOURLESS PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES?
In the testing for our Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies, we discovered that the starch granules in flour mute the flavor of peanut peanut butter, so we briefly turned our attention to an Internet sensation: flourless peanut butter cookies, made with just peanut butter, sugar, egg, and sometimes a bit of baking soda. Indeed, when we tried a sample batch of our cookies sans flour, they tasted super-peanutty and baked up looking much like traditional peanut butter cookies. Why didn’t these flourless cookies melt right off of the cookie sheet? Because peanut butter contains approximately 20 percent carbohydrates and 25 percent protein, components that absorb moisture and harden into a stable network in the heat of the oven. But without the sturdier structure that only starch from wheat flour can provide, these cookies fell apart in our hands before we could even take a bite.