Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe (2024)

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Cooking Notes

pyk

Can you use natural peanut butter, or are commercial brands (Skippy, Jif, etc.) best?

Heidi

I make cookies very much like these, but the trick for supercrunchiness is to bake them twice, first for about 10 minutes, then you let them cool completely and finally bake them for another few minutes until the edges begin to brown. Then, as directed in the recipe, let them cool on a wire rack.

Patricia

P.S. Rather than making dozens of cookies at one time,I put about half of the cookie dough into a freezer zip lock bag and freeze for one of those days where you want cookies without all of the work,thaw in the refrigerator and proceed with the recipe for baking. Works for many cookie dough recipes. I date and put time needed to bake along with oven temp on the outside of each. Often a lifesaver for a quick dessert or gift.

Celeste

While both my daughter and I definitely prefer the taste of natural peanut butter in most cases, many experiments over the years with various peanut butters for making cookies resulted in our agreeing that, at least to our tastes, Jif results in the best cookies.

Pamela Palmer

Aha--one of the bestess recipes ever. When our jar has only 3 or 4 left we are in "crisis mode" and more must be made urgently. A footnote that is essential to this recipe is that Cook's highly recommends using Jif Extra Crunchy Peanutbutter. I LOVE it when it is on sale and grab 3 or 4 then. For our family, I have changed the sugar amounts to: 1 cup light brown sugar and 3/4 cup granulated sugar. Lessening the sugar BUT not the taste!

LMK

I haven't used this particular recipe but one with very similar proportions of flour, PB, sugar and butter. I've cut the sugar by 1/4 to 1/3 and it tastes fine to me (that is, 1-1/2 cups sugar to 2-1/4 or 2-1/2 c. flour).

John Bridges

As recommended, used double the peanut butter, didn't change anything else. Results: SHOCKINGLY delicious cookies. Like Ultra-peanut shortbread. I will never make another kind of peanut butter cookie. EVER.

Upstate NY

If you want to make these gluten free, use just three ingredients - 1 cup crunchy peanut butter, 3/4 sugar and 1 egg. You can add 1/4 chocolate chips if you desire. Mix everything together and bake for 11-14 minutes at 350.

Elizabeth

Golf-sized doughs a bit too big. They came out massive after baking.

"They will not look completely baked" very true. The cookies came out soft on the top but when cooled they harden just enough. I put them back in the oven for another 3-4 minutes to make them extra crispy.

A bit too much sweet for me though. Could cut sugar by 1/4.

But nice recipe!

Ttrockwood

Chill the batter for an hour or more before scooping and baking and they will spread less

Will In Pittsburgh

Re: choice of peanut butter—natural peanut butter lacks added oil and results in dry cookies. Jif makes style called"Simply Jif" with less added sugar and salt. It seems to have a pronounced peanut flavor and is my choice for peanut butter cookies.

Lindsay

Used half whole wheat flour
1/3 c white 1/3 c brown sugar
Added 1/2 cup oats and cc's

Katie

I'd recommend adding an extra 1/2c peanut butter if you are a big peanut butter fan.

Will In Pittsburgh

You need to keep your fork *really* wet to make clear fork marks. Don't worry about over hydrating the cookies: there's so much fat in the dough that it won't absorb any water from your fork.

James Jones

To decrease the sodium content, I used unsalted butter and unsalted raw peanuts. Delicious!

Fran Gage

5. 6 oz ap2.5 oz dark brown sugar185 g smooth peanut butter

Name fran gage

5.6 oz ap2.5 oz dark brown sugar185g smooth peanut butter

Veronica HP

Lazy version turned out great! Whole Foods creamy-style PB untoasted pecans (aka what I had on hand) were perfectly delicious. Taking the time to really let that butter-sugar mix fluff-up created a rich-tasting cookie that was also light in texture.

Bea

These are the best peanut butter cookies I’ve ever had. Chewy, crunchy, crispy. They melt in your mouth and are loaded with peanut butter flavor. I followed the recipe exactly as written.

patsy

made them just as directed- 100% AWESOME

JenReady

Baking for 12 mins worked perfectly for me! I’m at sea level.

Janet

I made this with tahini and it was sort of halvah-ish. My Much better modification was using almond butter and extra almonds…YUMMY

Martha

Ok, the notes to double bake, popping the cookies back in for a few minutes after cooling, are spot on. The extra crunch at the edge is delicious. This time I used 3/4 cup white sugar. Next time I would try 1/2 cup white sugar and still keep the full 1 cup dark brown sugar. These are worth the calories!!

Scarlett Carhart

Why isn't this in metric? A baking recipe?

ginger tomato rice chicken…good, easy dws comfort food.

Outstanding, but sweet…cut sugars back next time. Maybe 3/4c…

Philtang

I'll be a little less scared of overbaking them as I usually am with cookies as they don't have to be soft in the middle like many others. I substituted the peanuts with cashews (worms in peanut bag..) and it was still peanuty from the peanut butter. Delicious without being something I have to do again often.

Margaret H.

Great recipe. Take out of oven just shy of looking fully baked. They will cook through in the next few minutes while on the cooling rack and will be nice and chewy.

Margaret

Best Peanut Butter cookie recipe I have ever tried. I followed the suggestion to reduce sugars by 25% and left the peanuts coarsely chopped because I like the pieces of peanut.

chloe

Found these to be on the dry/crumbly side, which may be the result of using a natural peanut butter instead of the reader-recommended Jif or Skippy. I also reduced the sugar by 1/4, and found them plenty sweet enough.

SMC

As-is, the cookies are tasty! As noted by others: You need to use peanut butter with oil in it, like Palm Oil. Natural peanut butter makes the cookies too dry when they’re baked. First batch went in as golf balls and I had to bake them for 15 mins to brown the sides. They come out big, so I made them smaller subsequently. There is a lot of sugar in this recipe. I think if I hadn’t used salted butter, they would be too sweet. Next time I will cut the sugar as others have recommended.

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Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the basic ingredients for peanut butter cookies? ›

Should you refrigerate peanut butter cookie dough before baking? ›

Nut butter cookie dough tends to be quite soft. If you want less spread in the cookies, it's best to chill it for at least an hour, and you can leave it in the fridge overnight if you want to make it ahead. If you don't mind your cookies spreading a bit, you can skip this step.

Why do they put fork marks in peanut butter cookies? ›

So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.

What is the best peanut butter to use for cookies? ›

Conventional creamy peanut butter works best for peanut butter cookie recipes because it has a smooth and even texture. My favorite creamy peanut butter brands are Skippy or Jif. Natural peanut butter, made up of just peanuts and salt, is typically very oily and hard to get even.

What are the ingredients in three ingredient peanut butter cookies? ›

Made with just peanut butter, sugar, and an egg, these cookies are a breeze to whip up, requiring minimal effort and time (under 30 minutes!). Plus, with such basic pantry staples, there's a good chance you have everything you need in your kitchen to make them right now!

Why are my peanut butter cookies always hard? ›

If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

What happens if you don't chill peanut butter cookie dough? ›

Why You Need to Chill Your Cookie Dough. For starters, chilling prevents cookies from spreading out too quickly once they're in the oven. If you use a higher fat butter (like Kerrygold), chilling your dough is absolutely essential. Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool.

What happens if you don't flatten peanut butter cookies? ›

Certain cookies — Sugar Cookies, Snickerdoodles, Classic Peanut Butter Cookies — need to be flattened a bit before they bake, lest they end up emerging from the oven looking like ping-pong balls rather than typical flat, round cookies.

Why don't peanut butter cookies need flour? ›

I was shocked to discover that these peanut butter cookies were flourless. But if you think about it in terms of baking theory and pastry techniques, it makes sense—peanut butter contains so much fat that it doesn't really need that much flour for structure and gluten.

Why do my peanut butter cookies taste weird? ›

Your other source of fat should be butter, not shortening. Butter will make your cookies taste buttery; shortening will make them taste suspiciously vacant, like Katy Perry's voice post-autotune. Yes, shortening yields chewier cookies than butter does, because butter contains water and shortening doesn't.

Why are my peanut butter cookies dry and crumbly? ›

If you're wanting to use natural (no sugar added) peanut butter, the cookies will be less sweet and they will likely spread out more. Using natural peanut butter will change the structure and texture of the cookies. Why are my cookies dry and crumbly? This is most likely a classic case of using too much flour.

Why are my peanut butter cookies crumbling and falling apart? ›

If you overmix the dough, the cookies will be dry and crumbly. The best way to fix this is to add more liquid to the dough. This can be done by adding milk, water, or even melted butter. You may also need to add more flour to the dough if it is too wet.

What happens if you add too much peanut butter to peanut butter cookies? ›

This may not sound like a lot, but it is enough that it can affect the quality of your cookies – adding too much peanut butter can make them dry, hard, and crumbly.

Why do my peanut butter cookies not taste like peanut butter? ›

The most common mistake with peanut butter cookies is using the wrong type of peanut butter. The BEST peanut butter for today's cookies is a processed creamy peanut butter, preferably Jif or Skippy.

Can you bake peanut butter cookies without parchment paper? ›

If you don't have any parchment in the house and really don't feel like going out to buy any, remember that many of today's baking sheets already have a non-stick surface, and the fat content of most cookies make many recipes unlikely to stick anyway. Silicone mats are a great reusable alternative, as well!

What are the 7 basic ingredients in all cookies? ›

What are the 7 basic baking ingredients?
  • Flour.
  • Raising Agent.
  • Salt.
  • Fats & Dairy.
  • Add-Ins.
  • Water.

What ingredients should be in peanut butter? ›

Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Contains 2% Or Less Of: Molasses, Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils (rapeseed And Soybean), Mono And Diglycerides, Salt.

What are the 4 main ingredient in baking cookies? ›

While there may be countless variations, each cookie at the core has four ingredients – butter, sugar, flour & eggs. The proportions of ingredients and the methods of mixing are what define our cookies. Dough spreads – Inside the hot oven, the butter starts to melt and the dough gradually starts to spread out.

What ingredients should I look for in peanut butter? ›

Always check the full list of ingredients at the back of the label on your peanut butter. Look out for added oils (palm, rapeseed, sunflower, peanut), hydrogenated fats and preservatives.

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