No-Bake Peanut Butter Cookie Bites
Peanut butter cookie dough you press into a bag at home and eat off the trail.
- calories
- 330
- weight
- 2.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 150
- protein
- 9 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 20 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- Snack
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Day hike
- Bikepacking
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Eat in the bag
- Grab and go
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Creamy peanut butter | 1 cup | not the natural kind, it separates and crumbles |
|---|---|---|
| Powdered milk | 1/2 cup | stands in for the flour and the eggs |
| Oat flour | 1/2 cup | rolled oats run through a blender |
| Brown sugar | 1/3 cup | |
| White sugar | 2 tbsp | |
| Butter | 3 tbsp | melted, at home only |
| Vanilla extract | 1 tsp | |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp |
Method
- At home: melt the butter and stir it into the peanut butter, both sugars, vanilla, and salt until smooth.
- Work in the powdered milk and oat flour a few spoonfuls at a time. Stop when the dough holds a shape and does not stick to your hands.
- Roll 1 inch balls and press each one flat with a fork. The cross-hatch is not decoration; thin bites dry out and keep better than thick ones.
- Leave them uncovered on a rack for two hours so the surface sets, then bag them.
- In camp: open the bag and eat. Nothing to heat, nothing to wash.
The original is a baked cookie with eggs and flour, which is a problem three days from a trailhead. Powdered milk and oat flour do what the flour and eggs were doing: they bind the dough and give it structure without an oven. Peanut butter and butter were already the fat, so nothing changes there.
Skip natural peanut butter. The stabilized kind holds the dough together under pack pressure, while the oily kind separates and leaves you with grease and crumbs. The two-hour air dry matters too: it firms the outside so the bites do not weld into a single mass in the bag.
Packing
Two layers per quart bag with a square of parchment between them. In hot weather they soften but do not fall apart. Ten days is a safe window; longer if the pack stays cool.
Variations
- Swap the butter for coconut oil and use powdered coconut milk to make it dairy-free.
- Fold in 2 tbsp of cocoa powder and an extra tablespoon of sugar.
- Press the dough flat in a pan and cut bars instead of rolling balls.
https://domesticsuperhero.com/easy-peanut-butter-cookies