Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: Like a dream come true for my peanut butter + chocolate-loving heart.
Texture: Thick, chewy, chunky, and soft.
Ease: SO easy!
Pros: This recipe may very well become your new favorite cookies!
Cons: None.
Would I make this again? I almost always have balls of this cookie dough in my freezer, ready for when I’m next craving these cookies.
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These Giant Reese’s Pieces Chocolate Chip Cookies are everything you could want in a single treat. It truly doesn’t get better than this!
Chocolate + peanut butter is a winning combination if there ever was one.
These cookies contain an obscene amount of the best mix-ins you could ask for: chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and Reese’s Pieces.
Free Cookie Customization Guide!
The science-based guide so you can bake perfect cookies every time!
They’re so big they look like they belong behind a bakery case display.
They’re slightly crunchy on the outside, soft yet chewy throughout, with oozing bits of chocolate in each bite. Pure heaven!
I hope you love these peanut butter-packed cookies as much as I do!
Sprinkle of Science
How to Make Giant Reese’s Pieces Chocolate Chip Cookies
The Peanut Butter
I prefer a conventional creamy PB here, like Skippy. Natural peanut butter works great here, too, and will actually impart a stronger PB flavor – just be sure to stir it very well before using, so there are no oily pockets or dry bits. If using natural peanut butter, I like Kirkland Organic.
How to Avoid Dry Cookies
- Be sure to measure your ingredients correctly – particularly the flour.
- Too much flour will create cakey, dense, tough cookies that don’t spread.
- Measuring accurately is one of the best ways to improve your baking.
- I’m a huge advocate for weighing ingredients. It’s a time-saver and ensures accuracy.
- Use a digital kitchen scale for best results, or if you don’t have one, use the spoon and level method.
What Type of Baking Sheet is Best?
I highly recommend using an unlined aluminum half-sheet pan lined with parchment paper for baking cookies.
Never use dark-colored pans to bake cookies, as they tend to overly brown or even burn the bottoms of the cookies. Check out my experiments with baking pans in my Best (and WORST) Baking Pans post here.
How to Shape Giant Peanut Butter Cookies:
- To make these cookies giant, roll the dough into 1/4-cup size balls, then flatten slightly before baking (to encourage spread).
- The result is a cookie as big as your hand with the perfect amount of thickness.
- Use a 1/4-cup (aka 4-Tablespoon) cookie scoop to make giant cookies.
- If you’d like to make regular-sized cookies instead, roll the dough into 2-tablespoon-sized balls and bake for about 10 to 12 minutes.
- Use this medium-sized cookie scoop to make regular-sized cookies.
How Long Do Giant Reese’s Pieces Chocolate Chip Cookies Stay Fresh?
These cookies actually stay nice and soft for days after they’re baked. Store at room temperature in an airtight container for three days.
Do I Need to Chill This Cookie Dough?
No – but if you have time, chill the Giant Reese’s Pieces Chocolate Chip Cookie dough overnight, covered well in the fridge. Here’s why:
- Chilling cookie dough is very similar to marinating meat – things just get so much better!
- The texture becomes chewier and thicker and the flavor intensifies.
- If you don’t have time, no worries. You can bake the cookies straight away and they’ll still taste amazing.
- Learn more about Why You Should Chill Your Cookie Dough here.
How to Make Giant Reese’s Pieces Cookies Ahead
Sometimes nothing compares to a cookie so fresh it’s still warm from the oven! This dough freezes wonderfully, so you can bake fresh cookies whenever the craving strikes. Get my tips on how to freeze cookie dough, and how to bake from frozen, here.
Giant Reese’s Pieces Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups (381 grams) all-purpose flour*,
measured correctly - 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 stick (113 grams) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature
- 1/2 cup (135 grams) creamy peanut butter**
- 1 cup (200 grams) packed light brown sugar
- 3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon milk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup (170 grams) semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup (170 grams) peanut butter chips
- 1 cup (170 grams) Reese’s Pieces
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter, peanut butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar on medium-high speed until very well combined, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, milk, and vanilla and beat until combined.
- On low speed, gradually add the flour mixture and beat until just combined. Add the chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and Reese’s Pieces and beat until just combined. You may need to do this by hand with a spatula if your mixer isn’t strong enough.
- Roll the dough into 1/4-cup balls and place on the prepared baking sheets. Flatten the dough balls into 1/2-inch thick disks.*
- Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the cookies are light golden brown at the edges. Place the baking sheets on cooling racks and let cool completely. Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
Recipe Notes
This post was originally published in 2013 and updated in 2023 with additional recipe tips. Photos by Jess Larson.
Hi I don’t have a mixer, will it be okay if I just use a spatula to mix them all together?
Unfortunately, that’s not a technique we’d recommend for this recipe as it won’t properly cream the butter and sugar and the resulting texture would be different. You can learn more about the importance of creaming butter and sugar here.
These cookies are awesome. Making them again tonight for a holiday party. Thanks for the great recipe.
🙂
Planning on making you say…. I only have chocolate milk, almond milk and half and half. Would any of those work in place of milk?
Hi Ashley! I’m sorry but we haven’t tried any substitutions such as these, so we can’t say for sure! I definitely wouldn’t recommend using chocolate milk though. Let us know how it goes if you give one of the other substitutes a try 🙂
Can the cookies be made smaller (1 or 1.5 TB scoop) and if so, what would the ecommended baking time be? TY!
Hi Didi! We’ve tested making the dough balls into 2-tablespoon sized balls and baking them for about 10-12 minutes and they turned out perfectly. Feel free to adjust from there if you’d prefer even smaller cookies, though I do highly recommend making the giant ones at least once… they’re absolutely delicious! 🙂
I just discovered your website and purchased your book. I love how you explain the science behind the recipes.
Q: I want to make all kinds of giant cookies like the Reese one. Can I use this recipe as a base and improvise different ingredients like macadamia nut/ white chocolate etc..
Thank you for the inspiration
Hi Norbert! We are so glad to hear that you’re enjoying Tessa’s wonderful recipes! Yes, feel free to replace the mix-ins in this recipe (or any cookie recipe!) with any other mix-in of your choice – just be sure to keep the volume/weight of alternate chocolate chips, nuts, etc the same written in the original recipe. Happy baking 🙂
These cookies were delightful, my whole family loved them!
Can I omit the tablespoon of milk or substitute it with something else?
Hi Dalena! We haven’t tried omitting or substituting the milk in this recipe, but they should still work okay if you omit it, or replace it with a dairy-free milk, half and half, or water. The milk in this recipe assists in softening the texture of the cookies, and helps the cookies brown, so replacing or omitting the milk will alter the end result slightly. Let us know how it goes! 🙂