Recently, when I came upon a jar of peanut butter that had been around a while, my New England frugality wouldn’t let me throw it out; instead visions of peanut butter cookies danced in my head. I hadn’t made them in years, and I discovered they are well worth reviving.

　　

Ingredients

8 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

　　1/2 cup granulated sugar

　　1/2 cup dark-brown sugar

　　1 large egg

　　1/2 cup peanut butter

　　1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

　　Pinch of salt

　　1 teaspoon baking powder

　　About 12 sugar cubes (preferably vanilla sugar, page 224), crushed with a rolling pin

　　

Step 1

Put the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, and cream it. Add the two sugars, and continue to beat until well mixed. Crack the egg into the bowl, add the peanut butter, and beat until smooth. Toss the flour, salt, and baking powder together on a piece of wax paper, then pick it up and form a spout so you can pour the dry ingredients alternately with the egg–peanut butter mixture into the mixer bowl as it is going. Mix until blended.

　　

Step 2

With your hands or with a small scoop, pick up equal-sized pieces of the cookie batter smaller than a golf ball. Roll them a few at a time in the crumbled sugar cubes and arrange them on buttered or Silpat-lined baking sheets, 2 inches between cookies. Repeat until you have used up all the batter. Now, with the tines of a fork laid flat on top of each cookie, make a crisscross pattern, first going one way, then the other. You may need to flour the fork if your dough gets sticky. Bake in a preheated 375° oven for 10 minutes, until just lightly browned; you may want to give them another minute, switching the pans around. Let cool on a cookie rack and store in a cookie jar.

　　The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. Copyright © 2009 by Judith Jones. Published by Knopf. All Rights Reserved.Judith Jones is senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf. She is the author of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food and the coauthor with Evan Jones (her late husband) of three books: The Book of Bread; Knead It, Punch It, Bake It!; and The Book of New New England Cookery. She also collaborated with Angus Cameron on The L. L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook, and has contributed to Vogue, Saveur, and Gourmet magazines. In 2006, she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives in New York City and Vermont.