These peanut butter cookies are adapted from a recipe out of Sepideh Gholian’s 2025 book, The Evin Prison Bakers Club: Surviving Iran’s Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes. It is one of the most powerful memoirs I’ve ever read — a harrowing, imaginative, rebellious book of recipes.
Peanut Butter Cookies for Houman Jokar and Sepideh Kashani
These peanut butter cookies, adapted from Sepideh Gholian's memoir The Evin Prison Bakers Club, offer a delicate balance of sweetness and nuttiness. Rolled in chopped pistachios or walnuts and baked to a golden finish, they are as tender as they are memorable.
Ingredients
- 225 g flour
- 2 tbsp peanut butter
- 70 g powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 70 g butter
- 1/2 cup pistachios or walnuts chopped fine
- 2 eggs separated
Instructions
- Cream the butter, icing sugar and vanilla, then add the egg yolks and mix. Mix in peanut butter.
- Add the flour in stages. Knead to form a nice, clean dough.
- Then take small amounts of the dough at a time, roll into balls, dip into the leftover egg whites and roll in the chopped walnuts. Lay out on a lined oven tray and bake for 15 minutes at 350°F, until golden, about 15 minutes.
- Remove and let cool.
Notes
This recipe is adapted from The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club: Surviving Iran’s Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes by
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What’s the story behind the meal?
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