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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.
These are absolutely the best! My family loves them and they are easy to make
These are just ridiculously good cookies. Just follow the recipe exactly and out come cookies that bakeries would charge an arm and a leg for.
Question: how long can I keep the dough in the fridge? Like 3 or 4 days?
Hi Avi! Check out this article here on chilling dough for more information, but we wouldn’t recommend more than 72 hours. So happy you love this recipe!
I baked these cookies with my mom, and I chose to add white chocolate chips to them! And I doubled the recipe to have more for my aunts, uncles, and cousins! With the white chocolate chips it did not taste as good, but they still tasted really good! Yummy! I would make them again, just no white white chocolate chips.
So you chose to rate these “yummy!” cookies 3 out of 5 stars because you chose to add something the recipe didn’t call for? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Why would you rate a recipe poorly for you not following the recipe?
These cookies are the best! 😋 I doubled the recipe as I wanted to share them with some of my friends. The only change I would make is to cut down on the chocolate chips as I found it hard to work 4 cups into the double recipe. This will now be my go to Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe! Thanks!
Made these tonight knowing I didn’t have all that I needed. I was a little short on Chocolate chips…like 1 cup short. Also, used light brown sugar. Lastly, I used super chunky natural peanut butter.My husband loves them! They are a little dense/heavy and kind of make a good breakfast cookie. Great with coffee.
Made these to bring to work to share! They turned out great! I didn’t quite have enough plain flour so I had to use a bit of bread flour and they’re still perfect! Did the classic fork criss-cross on top 🙂 Baked for 10-11 minutes.
Not your fault/not blaming you, but I don’t like when you have to give a whole backstory on the cookie and it takes me so long to find the actual recipe. What you could do it ad a link at the top saying “jump to recipe” so that if they want to read the text but if not they have the link. Haven’t tried the cookies yet but making them as a Father’s Day present and the recipe looks soooooo good
Thanks for the feedback, Jane! If you’d prefer skipping the blog post copy, we do have a “See Recipe” button at the very top of all of our recipe pages that will take you directly to the recipe. If you’d like to learn more about the science behind baking these cookies or have any questions about the recipe, be sure to check out Tessa’s “Sprinkle of Science” section, where she goes over ingredients and different baking tips for perfecting your cookies. I hope that helps. Let us know what you think of this recipe when you give it a try 🙂
Excellent recipe! I ‘goofed’ but it turns out to be a happy goof-up. Instead of using peanut butter, I had grabbed a jar of almond butter out of the fridge and didn’t realise my error until after I’d mixed the two butters together. No problem! Almond butter chocolate chip cookies are also extremely yummy. I’ll make this recipe again; perhaps next time with peanut butter!
I’ve tried 3 different recipes in the last month and these are the winner. I always under cook my cookies – 8 minutes was perfect for me and I didn’t refrigerate
uhmmmm what, absolutely delicious, it’s perfect in every way, the cooking time, the measurements, it’s the perfect chocolate chip peanut butter cookie, not too sweet or too unsweet, also the size is great too:))
I made these a month ago using light brown sugar, which is all I had on hand; and they were good. I just made them again using dark brown sugar and a combination of milk chocolate and peanut butter chips. They are amazing!!
Can u use almond better as an alternative to peanut butter?
Hi Mary! We haven’t tried that with this recipe (we have with Tessa’s Peanut Butter Pie recipe – check out the almond butter tips in the tip box, just above the recipe), but that should work just fine. Feel free to experiment and let us know how it goes! Happy baking!