Why are they spicy??

[Lauren_j15]

Hi!! Im a relatively new baker! Just looking for some advice as to why on earth my cookies ended up being spicy!

I made a batch of peanut butter cookies
Heres the recipe: www.chelseasmessyapron.com/peanut-butter-cookies

I only made a few very slight amendments to the recipe purely to suit what ingredients I had available.
I used baking powder instead of baking soda. Previous advice I've been given when substituting BS for BP has been to triple the amount (e.i. 1 teaspoon of BS = 3 teaspoons of BP)
I accidentally added slightly too much vanilla extract.
The cookies where also slightly over baked.

Apart from that I followed the recipe exactly.
They tasted yummy apart from a slight spicyness! Its driving me mad why theyve ended up spicy?! Could it be too much baking powder? Or the overbaking??

Thanks for any help!

 

[Becky]

Welcome to the forum!

Yes you are right, it's probably from all the raising agent. That's a heck of a lot! I'd try cutting it back - I wouldn't have thought you'd need more than 2 tsp of baking powder for that recipe.

 

[Lauren_j15]

Thanks Becky! Looking forward to trying them again but with slightly less baking powder

 

[Norcalbaker59]

I’m not sure what you mean by spicy so I can’t really comment on that. But insofar as substituting baking powder for baking soda, it’s best to substitute based on flour weight instead of trying to calculate differences between baking powder and baking soda. The relationship is between the leavening and the flour, not one type of leavening to another leavening if that makes sense.

1 teaspoon baking powder to 1 cup/140g

1/4 teaspoon baking soda to 1 cup/140g

If you used the spoon and level method for volume cup measurements you would’ve been between 120 g – 125 g flour per cup.

To demonstrate I will use 120g as the per cup equivalent

2 2/3 is the same as 2.66

120g flour x 2.66 = 319g flour

So 2 2/3 cup flour = 319g

1 tsp baking soda will leaven 140g flour

So divide total flour in recipe (319g) by 140g

319/140 = 2.278

So you need 2 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder for 2 2/3 cup flour