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.
The best part? These Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are so quick and easy to make – you don’t even need a mixer!
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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:
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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.
Notes
This recipe was originally published in 2014 and has been updated with recipe improvements and new photos. Photos by Ashley McLaughlin.
I made these, absolutely love them. I upped the peanut butter amount to about 300g based on reviews plus I only had half the amount of choc chips on hand. I actually used a natural peanut butter against your recommendation (mayvers dark roast crunchy) again because it was all I had, and it turned out fine, mixture wasn’t all crumbly. Thought to let you know. Thanks for a great recipe!
So happy your cookies turned out perfectly! Thanks so much for your feedback 🙂
Hi again Tessa!
Yes, I have set you up as a bookmarked site because I have learned to trust that you know what you are talking about! Raving reviews from me about you and your site!
My question is about cookie sizes and their actual weights. How many grams on average, because cookies have different ingredients I’m sure) would be in a 1, 2 or 3 tablespoon cookie? I’m finding that I am weighing everything these days!
Lauryl
Hi Lauryl! Great question! We haven’t experimented with weighing each cookie made in our scoops, but you are correct in that each type of cookie would weigh differently depending on the ingredients used. I did some quick research and found an article you might be interested in: http://www.bakersbrigade.com/cookie-scoop-sizes-explained/. It’s an older article, but it might help with your question!
So Yummy! I would add in more peanut butter next time because it’s a very faint taste of it.
This might be a silly question but can you swap the dark brown sugar for light brown sugar?
There’s no such thing as a silly question, always feel free to ask, that’s what we’re here for! 🙂 We recommend dark brown sugar for these cookies as it not only adds color but also moisture and chewiness (from the molasses) and extra flavor to the recipe, we haven’t actually tried using light brown sugar, so I can’t say for sure how it’d turn out! Let us know how it goes if you give it a try.
I made up a batch of dough with light brown sugar simply because I’m out of dark. It’s in the fridge now marinating. I’ll let you know how they turn out after I bake them later tonight, however I must say I could eat the dough raw after licking the spoon it was so good!
Loved this! However, I did not taste any of the peanut butter. It may be because I used JIF. What are your recommendations?
Hi Brittany! We used Skippy for this recipe, though JIF should work ok too! Really any standard commercial brand will work just fine, but make sure to not use any “natural” peanut butters where the oil separates. You should definitely taste the peanut butter, do you weigh your ingredients? If you found the chocolate to overpower the peanut butter, try adding in peanut butter chips in place of/as part of the chocolate chips for added peanut butter flavor. I hope that helps!
I had the same thing happen, next time I’m going to add more PB.
My ten year old granddaughter made these cookies this summer and I thought they were the best cookie I had ever had. So naturally I checked out your website and blog. I had never measured my flour before except with a measuring cup, but immediately bought a digital scale and made sure to measure everything in the recipe with it. I have made the bakery style chocolate chip cookies too and they are so good, but mine flattened out. I did chill the dough, but was wondering if being at high altitude (about 6500 ft) would cause them to flatten out. I was hoping they would be more like the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, fat and chewy. I am looking forward to trying more of your recipes!
Wow, please thank your granddaughter for making our cookies and sending you our way! So glad you’re enjoying everything! For the Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies, please check out the pink tip box above the recipe for more details on how to bake thick cookies. It’s possible your high altitude could be part of the issue, but neither Tessa or I bake at high altitude, so I can’t say for sure. I’d suggest reading our tips first to make sure you’re doing everything properly, and if you are and they’re still flattening, I’d recommend that you make any adjustments you normally have to make for a recipe to turn out. You can also check out King Arthur Baking’s article here for more help. Please let me know how it goes the next time you make them!
I tend not to have good luck with cookies but these were phenomenal! The only ingredient I weighed was the flour (which came out to 2 of my dry cup measures, so I added an extra 1/8 cup because I was worried I had too little). Bumped up the peanut butter to 1 full cup (used Kraft smooth), and used dark chocolate chips rather than semi-sweet. Let it sit for about 8 hours and baked for 15 mins on parchment lined trays. They’re a little crisp on the outside and super gooey and soft on the inside. I passed them around to neighbours and friends and they all raved!
Happy you loved this recipe!
Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum!!!!!!! These are amazing!!!! I made them today and wow!!!!! I do have one question. Would it ruin the cookies if I used crunchy peanut butter? I really like peanuts and I think it would be sooooo good!!!!
So glad you love them! We haven’t tried using crunchy peanut butter ourselves, but other readers have with success!
I’m so confused. I followed the directions exactly… But the cookies don’t taste sweet to me. They look beautiful and are the perfect texture/consistency… But taste more like a muffin or biscuit almost. I keep replaying adding the sugar and I can’t seem to find any error I made. Am I just a sugar-aholic? I really want to love these, can I add more sugar without messing up the consistency?
No, these cookies should definitely be loaded with peanut butter and chocolate flavor! What kind of peanut butter did you use? Did your cookies have more of a baking soda or baking powdery taste to them? Did you weigh your ingredients? I wouldn’t suggest added more sugar as that can definitely alter the outcome of your cookies, but you could try adding in peanut butter chips in place of/as part of the chocolate chips for added peanut butter flavor. I really hope you give this recipe another try, hopefully it was just something small that was missed! Please let me know if you do.
Nice!
I took the ingredients for these cookies on a ski trip and made them for hungry kids (and adults) after a day in the snow. They were absolutely perfect. I made them a little smaller, so ended up with 36. Now I want everyone else to go to bed so I can enjoy a few more on my own!
haha love it! So glad they were such a hit, hope you were able to savor a few last evening! 🙂
These peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are better than the kind from the bakery. They have the perfect consistency and a rich flavor that makes you want more. They are soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside!
So happy you loved them!