I enjoy eating dessert now and then, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time preparing it. That’s why I was delighted when “bryonyvaughn” (whose name is actually Cheryl) posted an amazingly simple nut-butter cookie recipe on this web site’s forums a year ago. Since then, I’ve made numerous batches, using whatever types of nut butter, sweetener, and flour appealed to me at the time. They all turned out great, which means that this recipe can very easily be adapted for any blood type. Best of all, I can go from square one to a cleaned-up kitchen with a dozen cookies cooling on the rack in about half an hour. That’s my kind of recipe!

Here’s Cheryl’s original recipe, followed by my notes:

1 part oil

1 part honey

2 parts nut butter

4 parts flour

I mix everything together, portion out in tablespoon sized balls, roll in flour & crisscross with fork, freeze on a cookie sheet and then transfer to freezer bags for storage. I can crank out 10 dozen in 45 minutes and then take out however many I want to bake at a time without messing up my kitchen. Straight from the freezer I’ll bake the cookies for 18 minutes at 325 F (165 C).

My Notes:

My copy of Cheryl’s original recipe actually says to bake the cookies for 8 minutes, but that may be my transcription error. I don’t freeze the unbaked cookies, I just make them one small batch at a time. Starting with room-temperature dough, I bake large cookies for 18 minutes, which seems to be just about right. Small cookies may need somewhat less time.

When the cookies come out of the oven, they’re very fragile, so I put the baking sheet on the cooling rack, cookies and all, and let everything sit for 10 or 15 minutes. By then, the cookies are firmer, and have cooled enough that I can gently slide them off the sheet with my fingers, onto the rack to finish cooling.

The cookies have a texture something like shortbread.



If you have trouble thinking in “parts,” you can make a small batch with 1/4 cup (60 ml) oil, 1/4 cup (60 ml) honey, 1/2 cup (120 ml) nut butter, and 1 cup (240 ml) flour. That makes a dozen large cookies or three dozen bite-sized ones. (I use cookie scoops, much easier than the old two-spoons method.) Or you can double that, or triple it, or whatever.

Like Cheryl, I use olive oil in this recipe. She uses light olive oil and I use extra-virgin because that’s what I happen to have in the house. The first time, I worried that the cookies would taste like olives, but they don’t.

The sweetener can be any liquid type. I’ve used honey, maple syrup, and agave nectar, and they all worked fine.

Any nut or seed butter works well here. I’ve used peanut butter, sesame tahini, almond butter, and homemade almond-walnut butter. The stiffer types of nut butter make a stiffer dough, and the runnier types make a softer dough, but the cookies turn out fine either way.

I’ve also used several types of flour, including spelt, Kamut, rye, and carob. (Using carob for all of the flour yields a grain-free cookie with an intensely chocolatey flavor.) Cheryl has also used oat flour. Again, they all work fine.

You do not need to oil the baking sheet. Rolling the balls of dough in flour makes them fairly easy to remove from the sheet after baking.

Instead of crisscrossing the dough balls with a fork, I generally press them with a potato masher, the type made from a flat piece of metal with a grid of little square holes cut into it. The appearance still says “peanut-butter cookie” and the work goes much quicker, especially with large cookies, which would require four presses with a fork.