peanut butter cookies

i got this recipe from allrecipes.com for peanut butter cookies since i was in the mood for a classic food from my childhood. I did make some changes from the recipe. here's the original recipe:

INGREDIENTS
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

DIRECTIONS
Cream together butter, peanut butter and sugars. Beat in eggs.
In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir into batter. Put batter in refrigerator for 1 hour.
Roll into 1 inch balls and put on baking sheets. Flatten each ball with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern. Bake in a preheated 375 degrees F oven for about 10 minutes or until cookies begin to brown. Do not over-bake.

and, here's how i made mine:

i didn't have unsalted butter, so i used salted butter and just a pinch of salt instead of 1/2 tsp of salt. there is an additional problem in that when my dear boyfriend did our grocery shopping and i said i needed butter, he came back with this
. that's right, a whole 1 lb block of butter. i was a bit befuddled with how to measure this. i ended up literally shaving off small bits of it into a measuring cup and packing it down til it looked like almost a cup. i truly think other than the process of baking all the cookies in batches, this may have been the most time intensive part of the process. he may have saved a bit of money, but in the end it really truly was not worth it.

so to the poorly measured butter, i added my peanut butter. however, i hate and i cannot stress this enough hate crunchy peanut butter. i am a creamy peanut butter girl all the way. so, i used the last bit of crunchy peanut butter maybe 1/3 a cup of crunchy to 2/3 cup creamy peanut butter. that way there were still a few bits of peanuts in the cookies.

next, i added the eggs and mixed it all together thoroughly.

then, i added all the dry ingredients but the flour.

despite what the recipe calls for, i still sifted the flour as i added it to the mix. i always sift my flour. then, after stirring it all together, i let the batter set in the fridge for an hour or so(i finished an episode of survivor up waiting and began hell's kitchen.)

i made them into 1 inch balls as the recipe indicated.

and then, my favorite part, made the criss cross pattern with a fork on them.

however, this makes gianormous cookies as they spread out significantly while baking. so, with the next batch i reduced the size a bit so they wouldn't smush together like this. and, i found that even though cooking times seem to need to be longer normally in my oven for this recipe, i had to shorten the cooking time down to 6-7 minutes per batch. i did end up with 7 dozen cookies instead of 4 like the recipe states. but, they were yummy and soft unlike a lot of peanut butter cookies.