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.
Pros: Perfect PB chocolate chip cookies.
Cons: None!
Would I make this again? I’ve always got a batch of these portioned into dough balls sitting in my freezer, ready to be baked off whenever the craving strikes.
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These Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are one of my absolute favorite desserts on the planet.
If you read Handle the Heat regularly, you likely know I adore the combination of chocolate and peanut butter.
Recently someone asked me why I loved the combination so much and I was taken aback slightly. My first thought was “well why wouldn’t I love this magic duo?” Then I realized that I’ve loved the flavors together since before I could remember. Since childhood, two of my favorite foods have been chocolate and peanut butter, so it only makes sense that I absolutely adore them combined!
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I’m actually surprised I’m not utterly sick of either of these flavors, let alone continuing to enjoy them together. I literally eat peanut butter every day. Same for chocolate. I’m still obsessed with the two, which is good for you because it leads me to share recipes like these Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies!
These cookies are ridiculously thick and chewy, yet soft, and have just amazing peanut butter flavor. They are 1000% perfect with a glass of cold milk.
The best part? You don’t even need a stand mixer to make this peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe, they’re so easy.
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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!
- The high ratio of brown sugar and the extra egg yolk in this recipe help contribute 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.
- Measuring your dry ingredients accurately is one of the best ways to improve your baking!
- If You Don’t Measure Your Flour Correctly, YOU COULD END UP WITH CRUMBLY DOUGH and dry, hard cookies lacking in flavor. Just check out the image below, showing the difference between correctly and incorrectly measured chocolate chip cookies.
The Best Peanut Butter for Baking
- This recipe has been successfully tested with conventional peanut butter (Skippy) AND natural peanut butter, with reservations.
- Check out my peanut butter experiment here.
- Only use natural peanut butter if it’s VERY well stirred to be completely smooth and cohesive with no oily or dry bits.
- When it’s very smooth, natural peanut butter will yield a much more bold peanut butter flavor!
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, if you wish!
Cookie Size and Shape
- These are large chocolate chip peanut butter 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
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) semi sweet 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
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 absolutely hate it 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!