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Peanut-Butter Sand Tarts

Sand tarts (a decorated crispy, flat butter cookie) have been a Frey-family favorite Christmas cookie for many years. Sand tarts are basically creamed butter and white sugar stabilized with a little egg and flour. While pursuing a reliable recipe for a Nutter Butter-like cookie dough that could be rolled and cut, I realized that when I made the cookies thin enough they baked to that same flat, crispy form with a mild peanut butter flavor.

ingredients:

  • ¾ cup A.P. flour
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • ¼ cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
  • ½ cup light brown sugar, packed
  • ½ cup creamy peanut butter
  • 1 egg
  • ¼ tsp vanilla extract

Dough preparation:

  1. Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in one bowl.
  2. In a mixing bowl cream the butter and brown sugar.
  3. Add the peanut butter to the mixing bowl and beat to combine.
  4. Add the egg and vanilla extract to the mixing bowl and beat for another minute.
  5. Add the dry mixture to the mixing bowl. Mix just until combined.
  6. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 8 hours.

When ready to bake:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 °F.
  2. Divide the dough into 2 or 3 portions; work with one portion at a time, refrigerating the others.
  3. Generously flour a piece of parchment. Flatten the dough into a disc and roll to about 1/8" thickness.
  4. Cut and place cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet. For the batch in the photo I used a pizza roller to quickly slice squares/rectangles. I was able to fill two cookie sheets.
  5. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, rotating cookie sheets halfway through the process.
  6. Allow cookies to cool completely before storing. Note that the peanut-butter flavor will become more pronounced over time.
Written by Jeff Frey on Monday August 10, 2020
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