I was watching a video recipe about peanut butter cookies. The maker mentioned that you shouldn't use all natural peanut butter for making those cookies, because the oils would make your dough split. You should use the other kind (I have no idea what this is).
Is this true?
My peanut butter contains these ingredients: peanuts, vegetable oil, vegetable fat, salt. I'm assuming this isn't 100% natural peanut butter? Is it only natural peanut butter if it contains only peanuts?
Best Answer
Peanut butters that are not "all natural" include cheaper oils along with sugar and emulsifiers to keep the mixture from separating and to make it lighter and smoother.
That lack of emulsifiers could make a huge difference but it depends a lot on the recipe.
In a normal cookie dough fat is creamed with sugar and eggs are beaten in one at a time which adds a ton of emulsification power from the lecithin in the yolks.
Additionally- the fat will bind with the flour and be baked into the cookies. Like Jefromi- I have not had any problem with the fat from natural peanut butter separating out after baking.
If you made a cookie dough and either left out the yolks or didn't beat it well enough to properly emulsify- and then let the batter sit out for a while before baking I would fully expect the peanut oil to separate.