Idiot Cookies

	Idiot Cookie 1 cup sugar 1 cup creamy peanut butter 1 egg Bake @ 350 f. for 8-10 min.
	No Sugar Added Idiot Cookie 1 cup pourable Splenda 1 cup Adams natural chunky peanut butter 1 egg Bake @ 350 f. for 11 min.

I was at church today when the pastor's wife mentioned a very easy penaut butter cookie recipe called "Idiot cookies". The name comes from the extremely easy-to-remember ingredients, "you gotta be an idiot to forget 'em." Well, I'm trying to cut down on my sugar intake, being a low carb fanatic. Of course, though, it's pretty difficult to concoct a zero-carb peanut butter cookie. I decided to swap out the peanut butter and sugar for pourable Splenda and all-natural Adams peanut butter.

Looking at the two photos above, I apologize for the slight difference in the color balance; in general both cookies resemble the nice peanut butter tan of the "No Sugar Added" cookie. Other than that, though, what you see is what you get. The "sugar" version comes out flatter and wider, and yields 12 cookies using a typical Pampered Chef "ice cream scoop" cookie dough tool. The "no sugar added" version comes out taller but smaller in diameter, and yields 11 cookies. Of course, you could use a bit less dough per cookie to arrive at an even dozen.

Per my rather unscientific reading of the ingredients, I'd say the No Sugar Added version will cost you about 12 grams of carbohydrates per cookie. I didn't bother with the Sugar version, since the cookie is half sugar anyway; it's a lost cause there.

Taste? I think you'll find the No Sugar Added version to be a fine addition to any collection of sugar-reduced treats. There are enough carbs in it to make you watch your intake, though. One would do the trick for an evening treat.

The Sugar version of course tastes great, and is very easy to make. My 12-year old daughter make the recipe and was thrilled at how good her first "non supervised" batch of cookies came out.

Being a peanut butter cookie fan, I thought it very important to include a proper fork indicator in each cookie. My daughter loves impressing the fork into the cookie, so to her went the honor of imprinting each of her Sugar versions with the full cross-hatch pattern. My No Sugar Added version got the simple one-direction pattern, fitting for a cookie that has "less". I do not know the origins of the fork-in-the-cookie coding for peanut butter cookies, but it is one of those timeless traditions meant to be passed on to the next generation.

So there you go, folks, a tale of two cookies.

Note: By "No Sugar Added", I understand that some folks would argue that Splenda is sugar. You'll have to make your own decision on this.