Peanut Butter Grahams
Submitted by: Amie McGraham / Southport Island, Maine
Who passed this recipe down to you? My mum
Recipe origin: Southport, Maine
How old is this recipe? It’s been around for at least a half-century.
The story behind the recipe:
Sometime in 1980, a local resident shared this recipe with my mother at the island general store and she finessed it into an essay about mothers and daughters, publishing it in Cook & Tell, the weekly food column she wrote for the local newspaper. Neither of us could have known that two years later she'd turn that column into a monthly foodletter packed with recipes, whimsical illustrations, and stories about food and family and life on a Maine island, with an eventual book deal.
I stumbled across this recipe while digging through the family archives after her passing, along with all her old columns and newsletters and decided to launch a digital reboot of Cook & Tell, that foodletter she wrote for 32 years. I recently made these cookies in celebration of Mother's Day, and shared them in the Mother's Day edition of the "new" Cook & Tell.
Ingredients:
Makes 3-4 dozen cookies
1 ½ cup whole wheat flour (or 1 ¾ c. white flour)
1 cup finely crushed graham cracker crumbs (about 7 full cracker sheets)
½ tsp. each of salt and baking soda
½ cup butter (at room temperature) or margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
¼ cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
¼ cup each of water and honey
1 cup chunky peanut butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, if desired
How to make it:
Combine flour, crumbs, salt and soda in a bowl and set aside. In separate bowl, beat butter, sugar and egg together until creamy. Beat in water, honey, peanut butter and vanilla. Stir into flour mixture; add chocolate chips. Refrigerate for 30 min.
Roll spoonfuls of dough into balls, criss-crossing with fork on greased cookie sheet or parchment paper, placing cookies an inch apart. Bake at 350 12-15 minutes. Cool on sheet 5 minutes before removing to cooling rack.
