Quick & Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

Four ingredients. One bowl. Thirty minutes from start to finish. These peanut butter cookies use a box of yellow cake mix as the flour-sugar-leavening base, which means you skip measuring half a dozen dry ingredients entirely.

Blend the cake mix with eggs, vegetable shortening, and peanut butter until everything comes together into a stiff dough. The cake mix handles the flour, sugar, and baking powder in one shot. The shortening keeps the cookies tender, and the peanut butter brings all the flavor.

Roll into balls, place on an ungreased sheet, and press each one flat with a fork to get those classic crosshatch marks. The fork press isn’t just decorative. It flattens the dough to an even thickness so the cookies bake uniformly.

Pull them at golden brown and not a minute later. These go from done to overdone quickly because the cake mix has more sugar than a from-scratch recipe, and sugar burns fast. Slightly underdone is better than crispy.

Pro Tips

• Use creamy peanut butter, not chunky. Chunky will make the dough harder to roll into smooth balls.
• Don’t grease the cookie sheet. The shortening in the dough provides enough fat to prevent sticking.
• Let the cookies cool on the sheet for 2 minutes before moving to a rack. They’re fragile when hot.
• If the dough feels too sticky to roll, refrigerate it for 15 minutes.

Variations

• Press a chocolate kiss into the center of each cookie right after pulling from the oven for peanut butter blossoms.
• Swap peanut butter for almond butter or sunflower seed butter for a nut-free version.
• Roll the dough balls in granulated sugar before pressing for a slightly crunchier exterior.