Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: These cookies are packed full of peanut butter flavor and plenty of gooey chocolate chips studded throughout.
Texture: Thick, chewy, soft, melty, and wonderful.
Ease: Very simple, made with pantry staples.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: These are the perfect PB Chocolate Chip Cookies!
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These Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are one of my absolute favorite desserts on the planet. I’ve always got a batch of these sitting in my freezer, ready to bake off whenever the craving strikes!
I’ve loved the flavor combination of chocolate and peanut butter since before I could remember. And these cookies showcase that combination perfectly.
These cookies are ridiculously thick and chewy yet soft, and are heavenly with a glass of cold milk.
What Makes Cookies Chewy, Crisp, or Cakey?
My free guide reveals the ingredients and tweaks that matter.
The best part? These Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are so quick and easy to make – you don’t even need a mixer!
If you’re cookie-obsessed like me, you’ll love making cookies that’ll rival your favorite bakery (just like these!) with my second cookbook, The Ultimate Cookie Handbook: Your Guide to Baking Perfect Cookies Every Time – now available on Amazon!
Sprinkle of Science
How to Make Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
How to Make CHEWY Cookies & Not Dry Peanut Butter Cookies!
- Brown sugar and an extra egg yolk help create a rich, chewy, and thick texture with lots of flavor.
- Be sure to measure your flour correctly (by weighing with a digital scale, or with the spoon and level method) to avoid creating cakey, dense, or tough cookies that don’t spread.
- If You Don’t Measure Your Flour Correctly, you may end up with crumbly dough, and dry, hard cookies lacking flavor. Just check out the image below, showing the difference between correctly and incorrectly measured chocolate chip cookies.
The Best Peanut Butter for Baking Cookies
This recipe has been successfully tested with conventional peanut butter (Skippy) AND natural peanut butter. Only use natural PB if it’s VERY well stirred with no oily or dry bits remaining. When very smooth, natural peanut butter will yield a much more bold peanut butter flavor!
Check out my peanut butter experiment here!
Which Chocolate Chips for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies?
I prefer the taste of semi-sweet chocolate chips in these cookies, but you could also use the same amount of milk chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, or chocolate chunks.
Feel free to substitute peanut butter chips for some of the chocolate chips for more PB-forward cookies.
Cookie Size and Shape
These are large cookies, just the way I like ’em! I use my large 3-tablespoon cookie scoop to form these cookie dough balls.
You can use the medium cookie scoop to make 1.5 tablespoon-sized balls of dough, if you prefer. Just shave off about 2 minutes from the baking time.
Peanut butter in cookie recipes prevents normal spreading, so that’s why we are flattening the balls well with the palm of your hand before baking. This will encourage them to spread more while they bake.
What Type of Baking Sheet is Best?
- I ALWAYS use an unlined aluminum half-sheet pan for baking cookies.
- Additionally, I always use parchment paper for baking cookies. I find silicone baking mats produce less of a crunchy exterior crust and are just one extra thing to clean.
- Never use dark-colored pans to bake cookies, as they tend to overly brown or even burn the bottoms of the cookies.
Do I Need to Chill Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough?
For best results, chill the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie dough overnight in a large bowl in the fridge. Here’s why:
- Chilling chocolate chip 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 dough off after it’s made.
How to Make Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies Ahead
- Make the cookie dough as instructed and portion out the dough balls using a cookie scoop.
- Place the dough balls in a single layer on a baking sheet, freeze them until solid, then place them in a freezer bag to store in the freezer.
- Defrost the dough overnight in the fridge, or for an hour or so at room temperature before baking (less if your kitchen is warm).
- You can bake from frozen, but note that with this recipe the cookies won’t spread as much.
- Get all of my tips for freezing cookie dough (and baking from frozen!) here.
More Cookie Recipes You’ll Love:
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
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Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups (318 grams) bleached all-purpose flour, measured correctly*
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 stick (113 grams) unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup (202 grams) creamy peanut butter**
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 cup (200 grams) packed dark brown sugar
- 2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 cups (340 grams) semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- In a large heat-safe bowl, microwave the butter until melted. Vigorously stir the peanut butter into the hot butter until well combined. Stir in the granulated sugar and brown sugar until well combined. Add the eggs and yolk, one at a time, stirring well after each addition. Add in the vanilla. Gradually stir in the flour mixture until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Dough may be loose and slightly crumbly. It will not appear like normal chocolate chip cookie dough. If it's unbearably crumbly, that's likely due to discrepancies among brands of peanut butter and if you used unbleached flour. Add 2 tablespoons milk if that's the case.
- OPTIONAL: If time permits, cover the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 24 hours but no more than 72 hours. Let the dough sit at room temperature just until it is soft enough to scoop.
- Divide the dough into 3-tablespoon sized balls using a large spring-loaded cookie scoop and drop onto prepared baking sheets. Flatten dough slightly into disc shapes with your palms. Dot each disc with a few extra chocolate chips for picture-perfect cookies.
- Bake for 12 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
- Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Recipe Notes
The Ultimate Cookie Handbook
Learn the sweet SCIENCE of cookie baking in a fun, visual way to customize your own recipes frustration-free. Plus, my best 50+ homemade cookies!
This recipe was originally published in 2014 and has been updated with recipe improvements and new photos. Photos by Ashley McLaughlin.
I’ve made peanut butter cookies with bacon fat instead of butter. With that being said do you think I could successfully sub out all or part of the butter in place of bacon fat?
You’d have to experiment, I haven’t tried that!
Taste good and fairly easy to make, however, I don’t think it needs the tsp of sea salt as the biscuits were slightly too salty.
first time for these thanks for all the tips!
My new go-to cookies! I’ve made three batches of these and they turn out perfect every time.
I’m so happy to hear this, Ariel!! 🙂
Turned out very well!!!
Definitely recommend it!
Can I use oil instead of butter in peanut butter cookies?
I haven’t tried that, so I can’t say for sure!
Little peanut butter flavor–actually, a rather harsh somewhat salty taste….and Not sweet enough. Made the recipe as is using Skippy creamy peanut butter and did not need to refrigerate. Very disappointed (once again) trying to find a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe or a peanut butter cookie recipe that we like. But I’m in the minority here.
I have made a lot of these cookies and these are not as good as some others. These lack a good peanut butter taste and are less sugary tasting, so they come off a bit flat. The extra yolk adds a lot of richness though. I the recipes that contain more peanut butter instead make a better cookie.
May I ask which brand/ type of chocolate chips do you use?
My favorite brand of semi-sweet chocolate chips are either Ghirardelli or Nestle 🙂
Hello! In New Zealand, we only have plain brown sugar or dark cane sugar. Would the cane sugar work?
I haven’t tried either, but I’m thinking the dark cane sugar would be closest to dark brown sugar. Please let me know how it goes if you give it a try!
Great recipe, tried it this morning. I will decrease the sugar next time I make them, a little too sweet for my liking, but otherwise great recipe!
Not sure where I went wrong. Followed the recipe as written and my dough came out unbelievably greasy. Added more flour and there was no difference.
Maybe if there was less peanut butter? I have no idea…
Oh no! I wonder if your butter got too hot when melting! Did you measure your ingredients with a digital scale? This dough can sometimes be a bit more crumbly, but it shouldn’t be greasy…did you make any substitutions, especially with the peanut butter?