Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: Ultra peanut buttery and perfectly sweet.
Texture: Soft, tender, and slightly chewy. Perfect with a glass of cold milk!
Ease: SO simple and easy. No dough chilling required.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: These are my favorite PB cookies and they’re about to be yours, too!
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These Peanut Butter Cookies are soft, tender, slightly chewy, and packed with tons of PB flavor. These are the perfect treat if you’re totally PB-obsessed like me!
I tweaked, adjusted, and tested these cookies relentlessly until I struck the perfect balance of nutty flavor and thick, tender, chewy texture in every bite.
This is one of those classic, crowd-pleasing recipes you’ll add to your repertoire and return to again and again – especially during the Christmas cookie season!
What Makes Cookies Chewy, Crisp, or Cakey?
My free guide reveals the ingredients and tweaks that matter.
These perfect Peanut Butter Cookies are like biting into nostalgia. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
Sprinkle of Science
How to Make the BEST Peanut Butter Cookies
How to Make Thick, Soft PB Cookies
- The PB: Peanut butter’s fat, protein, and oils create a thick, chewy cookie by adding richness and moisture while preventing excess spread.
- Ingredient ratios: The key to soft peanut butter cookies is the perfect ratio of PB, butter, flour, and leavening. Plus a hefty amount of brown sugar, which draws in moisture, for soft and tender cookies. Don’t reduce the sugar – learn what sugar does in cookies here.
- Measure correctly: When measuring flour, be sure to use a digital kitchen scale or the spoon & level method to prevent dry or crumbly cookies.
- Don’t over-bake. The cookies will continue to bake from the residual heat of the oven. Remove them just before they look completely done to maintain softness.
What’s the Best Peanut Butter for Cookies?
This recipe has been successfully tested with conventional peanut butter (Skippy and Jif) AND natural peanut butter. Check out our 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 bolder peanut butter flavor!
You can alternatively use almond butter at a 1:1 ratio. More on this below.
Why Do You Put a Criss-Cross Pattern on Peanut Butter Cookies?
Pressing a fork into Peanut Butter Cookies prior to baking helps flatten the cookies slightly, so they spread perfectly, bake more evenly, and brown evenly.
If we skipped that step, these cookies would be so thick that they’d barely spread, and they may not bake all the way through.
Do I Have to Refrigerate This Cookie Dough? What Does Chilling Cookie Dough Actually Do?
You do not have to chill this Peanut Butter Cookie dough for perfectly thick cookies that are full of peanut buttery flavor.
You can chill the dough for up to 72 hours if you prefer. The baked cookies become chewier and thicker, and the flavor intensifies. Learn more about why we chill cookie dough and the benefits of chilling cookie dough here!
How to Store Peanut Butter Cookies
Store cooled cookies inside an airtight container for 3 days at room temperature. Keep a tortilla in the container with the cookies to keep them soft and chewy and prevent them from drying out or getting hard as quickly.
Can PB Cookies be Frozen?
Yes! Freeze the baked, cooled cookies inside an airtight container for 1 month. Allow to defrost at room temperature then refresh in a 300°F oven for about 5 minutes, if desired.
You can also freeze the Peanut Butter Cookie dough disks (rolled in sugar and pressed with the fork) in an airtight container for up to six weeks. Allow to thaw to room temperature before baking as written. See all my tips for freezing cookie dough here!
Peanut Butter Cookies Variations & Substitutions
These cookies have endless variations, so feel free to have some fun with them!
- Almond butter: Use almond butter in place of the peanut butter at a 1:1 ratio. Our team tested this substitution successfully using Barney Butter Smooth Almond Butter. No need to adjust anything else.
- Mix-Ins: Add up to 1 ½ cups (255 grams) chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, toffee bits, toasted peanuts, or any other mix-ins you desire!
- More PB: Add an additional 1/4 cup peanut butter (so 1 cup or 270 grams in total) and increase the vanilla to 1 teaspoon to really amp up the PB flavor.
- Crunchy PB: I haven’t tried crunchy peanut butter, but it should work just fine at a 1:1 ratio.
- Bars: If you’re looking for PB bars, try my Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Bars, my Loaded Peanut Butter Christmas Cookie Bars, or even my Peanut Butter Stuffed Brownies.
- Make mini cookie sandwiches: Use a small 1-tablespoon size cookie scoop and bake the cookies for about 8 minutes, or until the edges are slightly browned. This makes about 30 small cookie sandwiches. Fill cooled cookies with the filling recipe below.
Peanut Butter Filling Recipe
- 1/4 cup (56 grams) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature
- 1/2 cup (135 grams) smooth peanut butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 cups (157 grams) powdered sugar, sifted
- 3 tablespoons (44 grams) heavy cream (keeps filling light, fluffy, creamy, and not as sweet)
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and peanut butter on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla, salt, powdered sugar, and heavy cream, and continue beating until the frosting is smooth and fluffy, about another 3 minutes.
More Peanut Butter Recipes:
Peanut Butter Cookies
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Ingredients
For the cookies:
- 2 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons (302 grams) all-purpose flour, measured correctly
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 1/2 sticks (170 grams) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature
- 1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup (150 grams) light brown sugar
- 3/4 cup (200 grams) creamy peanut butter* (see notes)
- 1 large egg, at cool room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
For rolling:
- 1/3 cup (67 grams) granulated sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar on medium-high speed until smooth and well combined, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Beat in the peanut butter until well combined. Beat in the egg and vanilla. On low speed, gradually add the flour mixture, beating until combined.
- Place the granulated sugar for rolling in a separate small bowl. Using a medium spring-loaded cookie scoop, form the dough into 1 1/2 tablespoon rounds. Roll between your palms to smooth, then roll in the granulated sugar before placing on the prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Slightly flatten the dough by pressing the back of a fork into each ball of dough twice, to create a criss-cross pattern.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the edges are slightly browned. Let cool on baking sheets for 10 minutes before removing the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
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 written in 2019 and has been updated with additional tips and recipe improvements. Photos by Ashley McLaughlin.
I usually use Skippy Natural Creamy peanut butter. You say don’t use natural in the recipe. Why?
Thanks for the tips appreciated your work.
The cups and grams measurements are not adding up. 302 grams of flour is equivalent to about 1 and 1/4 cups and 2 tablespoons i believe. and the sugars are each 3/4 cups but the grams are different. Which measurement is correct? Grams?
Sorry i meant the brown sugar and the peanut butter are different. The cups are the same but the grams are different.
3/4 cup (150 grams) light brown sugar
3/4 cup (200 grams) creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup of peanut butter weighs more than 3/4 cup light brown sugar.
Thank you for the recipe, I love cookies so much.
I love cookies so much, thanks for great recipe and step by step tips 😉
Wow!! Wonderful cookies!! I added chocolate chips to mine and they were perfect!! I made them again using cookie butter instead of pb and they were amazing too!! Thanks for a great recipe!!!! ♥️
this recipe is perfect , it is one of my favorites! I am thinking about using the exact same recipe to make nutella cookies. Instead of peanut butter I will use nutella.What do you think?
Good evening,
I made the peanut butter cookies OMG they are amazing!!!!! took them to work everyone loved them. I will definitely be checking out more of your cookie recipes .
I also tagged#handletheheat on my Instagram page with a picture of the cookies I made.
Thanks Karen
I made these as soon as I got the recipe yesterday. I followed the directions exactly. They are a nice cookie, but I find them a bit dry…next time I would bake a little less, as my edges weren’t browning so I think I overbaked them a bit. I am also not liking the sugar on the outside, so I would omit that next time. So, I will try this recipe one more time with the above changes and then review it again.
Hopefully these changes will make them work for you 🙂
Tessa,
Have made several of your creations and am very pleased with the results, so thank you for sharing them.
On the PB cookies, is the sugar roll absolutely necessary to the flavor ?
Thank you
It’s traditional to PB cookies, but if you don’t like that you can skip 🙂
I’m sorry but your videos popping up over the recipe I am trying to read are SO annoying!!!!
Hi Kay – I’m sorry to hear that! You should be able to press the X to close out of them 🙂
I love peanut butter and love these cookies. They are the right texture soft with a nice crumb like the Pb cookies we used to make as kids. They are going to be perfect when we make s’mores with them later on tonight! I noticed when you rate the recipe, it automatically clicks on “I made this” maybe you should change that so people aren’t misled with a 2 star rating when clearly that’s crazy!
Yay! So glad to hear that. I’m not sure I’m understanding your comment re: recipe rating. The “I made this” box gets ticked because the rating is meant to allow for feedback from only people who have actually made the recipe 🙂
Oh in a perfect world people follow directions but looks like the comment I was referring to was deleted. Keep up the good work cookie queen