Chewy Peanut Peanut Butter Cookies

Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe - double the peanut flavor since these have peanut butter and peanuts in the batter!

I live a very food-centric life. I cook. I bake. I work for a food and cooking website. I write a food blog. I photograph food. I eat with gusto.

This means that I am usually elbow deep in decadence. On any given day, I am tearing buttery flakes from a  freshly baked pastry, nursing a warm, homemade cookie, or at the very least, perfecting my pie crust. I’m at restaurants that are worth reading, writing, raving about. I’m focusing on cookbooks like the Times Sunday crossword.

Two days ago I was asked, out of all the food in the world, all the delicacies I’ve dipped my fork into, which is my favorite?

And the honest to Oprah truth?

The peanut butter and fluff sandwich.

Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe - double the peanut flavor since these have peanut butter and peanuts in the batter!

I try to pinpoint the date when peanut butter and I went from casually dating to, “Can’t live without you. Are we exclusive? I want you to meet my parents.” How did we meet and when did we become so close that I can mention, without hesitation, that I think Mr. Peanut is sinking our savings?

Too hard to tell. I suspect it’s been a lifetime of loving Reese’s, Pieces, anything nut buttery. If peanut butter is in the description, it will make my heart skip a beat. And I already have a heart murmur.

It’s the salty sweet. The thickness. The satiny smooth slick between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. The fact that fat, by nature, tastes rich. The incarnation of decadence. It’s the only food I’d say I don’t want to live without.

Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe - double the peanut flavor since these have peanut butter and peanuts in the batter!

These four inch, tanned rounds are doubly peanutty. They have that salted, sandy crumble act down pat. Their centers, smooth and chewy, with a pleasant nut crunch every second bite or so.

You know by now my policy on a chewy cookie. Soft and slightly underbaked or bust. Let’s risk salmonella if we can.

Chewy Peanut Peanut Butter Cookies

(adapted from SevenSpoons)

(makes 18 large cookies)

  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
  • 3/4 cup peanut butter (creamy or chunky)
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2/3 cup roasted peanuts (salted or unsalted)
  • sea salt for sprinkling

Whisk flour, salt, and baking soda together in a medium bowl and set aside. Beat melted butter and sugar together in a large bowl until well combined.

Add peanut butter and beat until the mixture is uniform and light brown in color, about 1 minute.

Beat in the egg and vanilla.

Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and give it one final stir.

Stir in the roasted peanuts. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes to let the dough rest and to let it firm up slightly.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Remove the bowl from the refrigerator. Form roughly 2 tablespoonful portions of dough into balls, 18 in all, and place on a cookie sheet (no more than 9 balls on one sheet). Flatten with your fingers or using the tines of a fork if you desire that classic look. Sprinkle with sea salt.

Bake on parchment lined cookie sheets for about 15-18 minutes, until the cookies are beginning to turn a golden brown on the edges. It’s best to pull them out early if you can. Simply let them rest on your hot cookie sheet for two minutes before removing to cool on a wire rack. This gives them a chance to set up, rather than overbaking them.

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33 thoughts on “Chewy Peanut Peanut Butter Cookies

  1. cozydelicious

    My mouth is watering… I want a cookie!!! You are too funny about your PB and fluff. I have to admit, I have never had fluff – can you believe that? I am a huge PB & J fan and can;t really imagine anything being better than crunch PB and apricot jam… but I may have to try out marshmallow fluff just to say I’ve done it!

    Reply
  2. Evan Thomas

    Oh God, these look JUST like my cousin’s grandmother used to make during the holidays. How delicious! Nothing is better than peanut butter except when it’s in a dessert form.

    Reply
  3. Cindy

    Jeez your cookie posts drive me to distraction!

    I was just getting over the toffee cookie bar one (which I made a similar one yesterday) and now THIS

    I think peanut butter too, would me my end all. That cookie looks to DIE for.. and as soon as we snarf down the toffee bars…I’ll be making a new shopping list for PB!

    YAY!

    Reply
  4. Erica

    haha- glad you shared the “Oprah truth”. Peanut butter/all nut butter in general is amazing. Its delicious & packed with protein :) Which this vegetarian loves. Great cookies!

    Reply
  5. morganjanessa

    Mmmm nice! Now I see you used a traditional PB. Have you used a natural PB. That is my favorite, never go back to the Jif’s or what have you. However, I know the sugar content would be different. Taste maybe?

    Reply
    1. Can You Stay for Dinner

      Hmm…I’ve honestly never baked with natural peanut butter, even though that’s the kind that I use in my everyday eating. I moved away from Jif and Skippy years ago, but I still use them when I bake. I bet the natural would be fine- the cookies are sweet enough with the amount of sugar in the recipe so I bet they’d taste just as good!

      Reply
    1. Renee

      Are these pb cookies similar to the Tim Hortons cookies? They look like they are! Please post when you have tried these with natural pb.

      Reply
      1. Rachel

        I find these super similar to Tim Hortons, but I add peanut butter/Reese chips, and that really hits the mark for me! :)

        Reply
  6. Melissa Campos

    I just baked these cookies and I must have done something wrong. First of all, when you state beat the egg and vanilla, I assume it was one egg, even though you did not list eggs in the list of ingredients. Second, I used dark brown sugar as stated and my cookies did not come out light like shown in your pictures nor do they look like traditional peanut butter cookies, they look like chocolate cookies, and third I baked them for 14 minutes, less than the stated 15-18 min, and they came out burnt and hard as a rock. I had to bake them for 8 min for them to be chewy. I am overall disappointed.

    Reply
    1. Renee

      I did see that there is one egg listed in the ingredients list. Every oven is different in temperature and especially if you have a convection oven. I put my convection oven on when baking cookies and turn the temp down 25 degrees then what any recipe calls for and usually the amount of time is shorter as well. I also watch them like a hawk when I bake a recipe for the first time. Hope this helps.

      Reply
  7. Delia Edwards

    I made these last week for my boyfriend and he loved them! I am not much of a baker (I have trouble being precise and don’t own a lot of the good baking toys), but these turned out better than any cookies I have ever made before! I am not a peanut fan, but I could tell by the color and texture that these were great, and my family raved about them for days!

    Thank you so much, yours is my new favorite site on the interweb!

    Reply
  8. Ken

    In perpetration of the ingredients, I had everything until I started to make them. You left out the egg in the ingredient list.

    Reply
  9. KD

    Instead of peanuts, I took 1 tablespoon sized plain dough balls, cut them in half, and put 5-6 regular sized chocolate chips (Ghiradeli semi sweet) inside, then smushd then back together so none of the chips showed. I baked them 9 minutes. WOW.

    I also browned the butter instead of just melting it.

    Reply
  10. Maija

    OMGoodness! THANK YOU for sharing this incredible recipe! This will now become my “Go To” peanut butter cookie. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever eaten a better one!

    I used a natural chunky peanut butter, by the way. It was perfect!
    I cut the sugar down to 3/4 cup but left everything else as written. I dipped my fork in sugar when cris-crossing, so the tops had a tiny bit of sugar as well as the light sprinkling of sea salt. Perrrrrfect! The amount of peanuts was perfect. I’ll add chocolate chips one day, but for today I just wanted straight peanut butter.

    Okay, so I used the word “perfect” a lot… I’ll stick by that too!
    Thank you soooo much!

    Reply
  11. T.J.

    I’ve been asked to post a peanut butter cookie for quite some time now, and after looking around, I’ve landed on yours to try out this weekend! No doubt by your description it’ll be a keeper. Your line about “slightly underbaked or bust” sealed the deal for me :)

    Reply
  12. courtney james

    Hi,

    I made these cookies and followed your instructions but they were not as flat as yours. They were thick. Can you please give me some insight into what i could have done wrong? Thank you

    Reply
  13. Pingback: 18 Awesome Peanut Butter Cookie Recipes You Need to Know About

  14. Pauline Luong

    Perfect recipe! I reduced sugar by 1/3 and added oats instead of peanuts. I made 1 Tbs sized balls and they were a good standard size. Got about 30 cookies. Baked for 12 minutes. They came out very nice looking. I’m going to try them tomorrow but can tell they are going to be very tasty. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  15. Carson

    I just made these cookies, and they have a crumbly texture instead of chewy and soft, but not sure if that is indeed how they’re supposed to be. They also didn’t flatten out as yours did in the pictures. They taste delicious but I was disappointed with the texture. With subsequent batches I decreased the cooking time, to see if they would improve, but it didn’t work out. Any thoughts on what I could’ve done wrong?

    Reply
  16. Nikita

    I just made these cookies. I followed the recipe exactly and while they were a bit on the very sweet side the texture was perfect! Overall very happy. Thank you so much. You have a new subscriber ; )

    Reply

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