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.
for a thick and soft cookie, they’re pretty good, although a little bit TOO sweet, and a very mild peanut flavor (hence 4 stars instead of 5)
just don’t think that they’re chewy (bc that’s what i was expecting and i was surprised lol)
Hi Alex! I’m glad you enjoyed these cookies, even if they did not turn out as you’d hoped. In case you’re interested in troubleshooting at all, I have a couple of ideas as to what may have gone wrong here. Are you weighing your ingredients, or measuring by volume? Weighing vs. measuring by volume can have a huge impact on your baked goods, and this may be the cause of these seeming a little too sweet for your preferences. Tessa talks about how to measure ingredients for best results in this article here. I also want to check what type of peanut butter you used? Natural peanut butters can mess with the dough’s structure, and can produce a crumbly or strange texture.
If you just wish to try a different peanut butter cookie recipe, I highly recommend trying out Tessa’s Giant Reese’s Pieces Chocolate Chip Cookies! There is a more pronounced peanut butter flavor in those cookies, and they also contain Reese’s Pieces, so there’s an even bigger peanut butter punch from those, too! I hope this helps! Happy baking
Just wondering if the cookie dough or baked cookies freeze well?
Hi Betsy! Yes, you can absolutely freeze the cookie dough! We like to scoop the dough balls out, freeze them until solid, then remove them to a ziptop bag to store in the freezer. You can defrost the dough overnight in the fridge, or for an hour or so at room temperature before baking. You can bake from frozen, but note that with this recipe the cookies won’t spread as much. Check out this article for all of Tessa’s tips on freezing cookie dough here! As for freezing baked cookies, it may work to wrap them in plastic wrap and store in an airtight container in the freezer – but we haven’t tried that ourselves, so I can’t say for sure! I would definitely recommend freezing the dough and baking some off whenever you fancy, rather than freezing the baked ones, for best results 🙂 I hope that helps! Happy baking!!
Made this. Directions were very good.
However, not much flavor, didn’t care for texture.
Wi)l definitely not make these again.
Hi Scotty! I’m sorry to hear these cookies did not turn out as you’d hoped. In case you’re interested in troubleshooting at all, I have a couple of ideas as to what may have gone wrong here. Are you weighing your ingredients, or measuring by volume? Weighing vs. measuring by volume can have a huge impact on your baked goods. Tessa talks about how to measure ingredients for best results in this article here. I also want to check what type of peanut butter you used? Natural peanut butters can mess with the dough’s structure, and can produce a crumbly or strange texture. Alternatively, if you just wish to try a different recipe, I highly recommend trying out Tessa’s Giant Reese’s Pieces Chocolate Chip Cookies! There is a more pronounced peanut butter flavor in those cookies, and they also contain Reese’s Pieces, so there’s an even bigger peanut butter punch from those, too! I hope this helps! Happy baking
I made these gluten free and they came out spectacular! Followed the directions to a T (except of course the flour) and my family and I were not disappointed. I also used chunky Skippy and two types of chips. Definitely making these again.
Yay! I’m so glad these were delicious, Sue – and even with your gluten-free substitution!
I made the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies this weekend and they were the best Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies I’ve ever made. They were so thick and chewy, just like the picture in Tessa’s Book and on line. I do however have a question. Before I purchased the book, I printed the recipe above. When looking at the recipe in the book vs the one on your website I noticed two discrepancies. The book recipe does not say anything about chilling the dough nor does it say to slightly flatten your scooped out dough before baking. However the recipe above says to chill the dough and flatten the scooped balls before baking. I followed the book and as I said they were delicious (I ate way too many, LOL!) Just out of curiosity, is there a reason why they are different recipes and which would you recommend?
Sweet Regards, Linda Butler
Hi Linda! I’m so happy to hear that you love this peanut butter cookie recipe so much! Regarding your question about the differences between the blog version and printed version of the recipe, it’s simply that we can update the online version easily, and we cannot so easily update the printed cookbook version! After further testing, we determined that pressing the cookies down slightly made for a better texture once baked, and we did include this in the second edition of the cookbook! Your copy must be from our first printing run, and therefore it was prior to this decision! As for the chilling question, it is not entirely necessary with this particular recipe (although Tessa does recommend it for most cookie recipes – read why here!) so it was missed in the cookbook as it was determined to be an optional step. We do prefer them after a chilling period, though! I hope that helps and answers your questions! 🙂
These cookies are amazing!!! Everyone loved them.
Yay! We love hearing that, Wei!! 🙂
I loved this recipe so much . It’s really awesome
Thank you so much for the recipe. Cookies are delicious. I love how they have dark brown sugar in as this gave them such a rich toffee flavour. I used crunchy peanut butter which gave them little pieces of peanut throughout. I also used dark, milk and white chocolate chunks (chopped some chocolate bars). I rolled the dough into balls then froze them for 30 minutes which worked a charm. I then cooked 9 and ziplock bagged the rest in the freezer for another time (just as well or we would have eaten them all!) My family all loved them especially my little ones! Highly recommend and will make these again!
Yay!! So happy these were a hit with your whole family, Louise!!
Hello! My dough is currently in the fridge and I plan to mail these cookies to friends nationwide this week- do you think they’ll be okay? I always wrap my cookies tight with seran wrap to keep them safe! ◡̈
Hi Ahlam! These cookies will stay fresh and delicious for about three days. If you bake them the morning you plan to mail them, then (once cooled completely) wrap them very thoroughly in plastic wrap (and maybe even a zip-top bag or an airtight container around that, too, for extra protection from the elements!), you will hopefully still have delicious cookies at the other end of their journey! I can’t guarantee they will still be perfect, of course, as we have not tried this, but hopefully they will still taste great! I hope that helps! Happy baking 🙂
These are ridiculous cookies. My new favorite peanut butter recipe. Many thanks for weighted measurements! Can you do this for the eggs too? I keep bantam chickens, and they lay eggs that are 30 grams to 45 grams in size. I can roughly estimate 2 to 3 eggs to every 1 “large” supermarket egg but weights would help. Thanks for the wonderful recipe!
Hi Sarah! I’m so excited you loved these cookies! Large eggs in the USA are typically around 50 grams. I hope that helps! 🙂
amazing!!!! I used MaraNatha natural organic peanut butter and baked right after mixing.. OH MY… so so good.. AND i used a scale to measure… didnt realize how much measuring make a difference. i measured it like i always did then put that amount on the scale and was WAY OVER… from now on i am using grams… i recently am making sour dough bread using bakers measurements and will follow suit with recipes from now on… big difference. THANKS great recipe to take to my father in law.. he loves PB cookies.
Hi Julie Ann! I’m so happy you and your father-in-law loved these peanut butter cookies – and SO thrilled you love weighing to measure!! Isn’t it crazy the difference it makes!?
Literally some of the best cookies I’ve ever made. They look and taste like they’re straight out of a bakery and the dough was so easy to work with!
SO thrilled to hear that, Katie!! Glad you loved this recipe 🙂 Happy baking!!