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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.
Will this recipe work if made the batter in bar form instead of cookies? I like the idea of the extra eggs for a little extra protein.
We haven’t tried that, but you’re more than welcome to experiment! Let us know how it goes.
If using unbleached flour – how many grams do you recommend using?
Hi Lisa! I just responded to your question on another recipe, but I’d like to repeat what I wrote there just in case other readers have the same question! Our team recently experimented with bleached vs unbleached flour in our PB&J Cookies, and Tessa shared our findings here. Our team always uses Gold Medal Bleached Flour during testing, but if you only have unbleached flour, King Arthur recommends using slightly less flour (1-2 tablespoons). I hope that helps!
This recipe was fun to follow! I would say I didn’t end up needing 2 cups of chocolate chips and in the future, I would cut that in half (I also don’t like too much chocolate). My dough only yielded 18 cookies but I made them pretty big. I was surprised that even if they were thick they cooked evenly and were relatively fast.
This recipe is good
This recipe was incredible! I’ve made them 3 times now and each time they were amazing. I love how thick and chewy these turn out. I make sure to cook them until just barely done for extra gooeyness. Thank you for sharing this great recipe, it’s very much appreciated!
I did not like this recipe. The cookies came out too thick and cake-like. I will try the recipe again, but I will use less flour next time and less egg. I will probably drop the extra yoke. I just felt these were way too thick and did not have the soft gooey center (when warm) that you get with a regular chocolate chip cookie. There were too many chocolate chips in this recipe, which normally is a good thing, but they didn’t incorporate into the dough, so there were a lot of loose chips that I added to the top of the raw cookies before baking. Also, I thought that there was too much sugar in the recipe. I made sure that I measured the flour carefully, but the dough just seemed too thick and not normal for cookie dough.
I made them. Easy recipe. Beautiful cookies. BUT, 340g of chocolate chips is a lot. They wouldn’t all incorporate into the dough. And even using semisweet chips, in that huge quantity, made the cookies too sweet and overpowered the peanut butter flavor. I’ll make them again, but with half the chocolate chips. Consistency and conformation was good though, which I was concerned about in a remote camp at 5700′ elevation.
I made these cookies last night there were delicious and come out beautifully but they were a tad bit too sweet. If I reduce the sugar would it affect the texture of the cookie?
Great question! Yes, reducing the sugar in this recipe will affect the thick and chewy texture of the cookies. You can learn more about what sugar does in baking in this article here. I’d recommend substituting the semisweet chocolate chips with a darker chocolate chip/chunk to better balance the sweetness. You could also use natural peanut butter for a more pronounced peanut butter flavor, which could also help balance the sweetness, and even top them with a bit of flaky sea salt for some salty-sweet flavor 🙂
I forgot to add sugar somehow and they still tasted great!!
Wow
🙄 riiiiggghhht …
you clearly don’t believe in the power of chocolate chips. But I turned them into a biscoff-style spread which was much better.
These cookies are delicious! I replaced a cup of chocolate chips with a cup of M&Ms.
I had to make two batches the second time I made them because everyone ate them so quickly.
Delicious! Made these for my family and they loved it. I didn’t have any butter so instead I used 1 cup of peanut butter and 1/4 cup of avocado oil and it turned out great. The batter was a bit hard to mix but i kneaded it with my hands so it was fine. Thank you for sharing the recipe!
Thank you for this recipe, Tessa!
… and for the recipes you kindly share with the public. They are much appreciated.
This peanut butter chocolate chip cookies recipe caught my attention today because I had a little PB jar in the fridge that needed to fulfill its purpose 🙂
The cookies turned out delicious!!! … even though I skipped the white sugar and the extra egg yolk. How much better than that could it get? Maybe we’ll find out next time 🙂
Blessings and all the best!