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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, no mixer, and ready in 30 minutes.
Why you’ll love this recipe: These are the perfect PB Chocolate Chip Cookies!
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!
Absolutely delish!! I made them a bit larger (18 total instead of 24) and they are amazing!! I made them for Father’s Day, but the whole house approved. This is by far my favorite texture I’ve ever seen in a cookie. Perfectly crunchy on the edges, soft and chewy insides.
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!
Key Recipe Ingredients
Peanut Butter: I prefer natural peanut butter (well-stirred with no oily or dry bits) for a bolder peanut butter flavor, but conventional peanut butter (like Skippy or Jif) works too. Check out my peanut butter experiment here!
Dark Brown Sugar: Helps create a chewy texture and adds rich flavor. You can substitute light brown sugar if it’s all you have, but the color, texture, and flavor will be different.
Egg Yolk: The extra yolk contributes to a rich, chewy cookie.
Chocolate Chips: Semisweet is my favorite, but you can substitute milk chocolate, dark chocolate, chocolate chunks, or peanut butter chips for even more peanut butter flavor.
Sprinkle of Science (open me!)
- 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 the spoon and level method) to avoid 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 showing the difference between correctly and incorrectly measured chocolate chip cookies.
- 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.
- Check out my Best (and WORST) Baking Pans article here for more details on the science of baking pans.
Although not required for this recipe, I highly recommend chilling the cookie dough for 24-72 hours before baking. You can always bake off a few cookies right away and chill the rest. 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. It also improves the golden brown exterior as the cookies bake, for crisp edges.
- You can either scoop first and chill (make sure to wrap in plastic) or chill the entire mass of dough, let it come to room temperature, then scoop.
- Learn more about why chilling cookie dough matters here.
Storage & Make ahead
Storing Baked Cookies: Keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Make-Ahead Dough: Portion the dough, freeze the balls until solid, then transfer them to a freezer bag for up to 6 weeks. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator or for about an hour at room temperature before baking.
Baking from Frozen: This is possible, but the cookies won’t spread as much. Get all of my tips for freezing cookie dough (and baking from frozen!) here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Peanut butter in cookie recipes prevents normal spreading, so flattening the balls with the palm of your hand before baking helps encourage them to spread more while they bake.
If you’d like an even stronger peanut butter flavor, try using very well-stirred natural peanut butter and swapping some of the chocolate chips for peanut butter chips.
I haven’t tested this, but many readers have successfully swapped in King Arthur gluten-free measure for measure or Bob’s 1 to 1 baking flour.
Yes! For about 12 medium cookies, use a medium cookie scoop to make 1 1/2-tablespoon portions and reduce the baking time by about 2 minutes.
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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.
- 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.
My daughter made these (and attached a copy of your recipe) for her 4-H baking contest. She won first place! They are delicious. We love how they still taste mostly like chocolate chip cookies but with a hint of peanut butter.
Made these last night and they’re delicious! Texture is on point! I used 1c semisweet chocolate chips and 1c pb chips. Still a bit too sweet though and masks the pb flavor so I will reduce sugar next time. Thanks for a great recipe!!
Hi there! We are so glad you enjoy these cookies! Don’t reduce the sugar next time, though; that will do a lot more than just reduce the sweetness, as you can see in this article here! Instead, try increasing the salt a little, and use dark or bittersweet chocolate chips instead, to balance out the sweetness 🙂
Great recipe! My only problem is that there is NO NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION. My husband is a diabetic & that info would help tremendously in helping to keep his glucose levels more even.
Hi Donna! I’m sorry, but we don’t calculate nutritional information because we believe desserts should be an indulgence. We realize there are reasons, such as your husband’s, why this can be important to calculate, but online nutritional calculators should be able to assist you with this. Happy baking 🙂
Can I use regular brown sugar??
Hi Christine! Yes, you can use light brown sugar, but the cookies won’t be quite as moist as if you use the dark brown sugar. The extra molasses content in dark brown sugar brings extra moisture to the cookies, as well as a deeper butterscotchy flavor. Let us know what you think of these cookies once you’ve given them a try 🙂
How do you remove peanut butter with ease when using it to bake?
Hi Carly! I hope I’m understanding your question correctly. We typically use a small silicone spatula and/or a spoon to remove the peanut butter from the jar and either weigh it (our preferred method – it’s more precise and, bonus!, fewer dishes!) or to a measuring cup to gauge the volume, and then spoon/scrape it all into the bowl with the other ingredients when needed. I hope that helps! Please feel free to reach back out if I misunderstood your question!
These are without a doubt the very best version of PBCC cookies I have ever made! The recipe is perfect. The cookies are soft, perfectly sweet and salty and peanut buttery!!!
Thanks for sharing you’re recipe.
Only one comment. For me too salty so I will just leave our the added salt next time. Other than that the young people I support loved them….
THE best peanut butter cookies ever!! I have made these several times. Every time I make these cookies, I still can’t believe how scrumptious they are!! Thank you so much for sharing your recipe!! I share all the cookies that I make with my husband’s buddies. These cookies are they’re absolute favorite, bar none!
What an excellent cookie recipe. Best cookies I ever had so delicious and amazing texture. I highly recommend making these the whole family loved them. I don’t usually leave reviews but felt this really needed one.
Wow, so thrilled to hear that, T! Thanks so much for the comment!
Best peanut butter chocolate chip cookies ever. Seriously. These were perfect. I let the batter sit in the fridge for about 2 hours just because I had the time and they came out beautifully fluffy and thick. I wonder how they would come out if the batter sat in the fridge even longer! Anyway, thank you so much for the recipe. These are my new favorite cookies.
So good!! Although I used light brown sugar since it’s what I had on-hand. Thank you for the tip about the flour. I’m sure this will help with my regular chocolate chip cookie recipe.
What a disapointment. Waste of time. I even had the dough sitting in the fridge for 24 hours. They didnt taste like peanut butter, dry, no flavor, terrible after taste. Way to many chocolate chips. I needed these to give to someone and with me not having any time at all to bake anything I thought these sounded easy and have so many great reviews. False advertising. Now I have cookies that are terrible and nothing to give for a gift.
Hi Dennis! Oh no, I’m sorry to hear these cookies did not turn out as you’d hoped. It’s hard to say what exactly went wrong without having baked alongside you, but it sounds like something perhaps was accidentally mis-measured, because these cookies should be deliciously peanut buttery with a great level of moistness and chewiness! How do you measure your ingredients? By volume (using cups), or by weight (using a digital kitchen scale)? When measuring by volume, it’s so easy to mis-measure flour/sugar/etc and throw off the entire chemistry of a recipe. Tessa talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time, in this article here! There are multiple other things that could have gone wrong, too (such as inactive leaveners, using natural peanut butter, etc), so if you wish to troubleshoot any further, please reach back out and we can try to work together to figure out what went wrong. Thanks so much for giving this recipe a try, and have a great day 🙂
Looking for yet another cookie recipe, I came across and, tried these. I always ignore Brand suggestions and used half the baking powder and substituted plain yogurt for rest. This is now my “go to” cookie recipe!