I hate calling things 'the best' - but these easy peanut butter cookies really are the best (to me). Made with a no-chill brown butter peanut butter cookie dough, these cookies are quick to make, and the dough bakes amazingly from frozen, making them a great make-ahead option!
Hi hi! I am just popping in to share this new recipe with you - super easy Peanut Butter Cookies!
I played around a bunch when I was developing this Peanut Butter Cookie recipe - using my Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie as a base. What I came up with is, to me, the best Peanut Butter Cookie. It is deliciously toasty from the brown butter, has no chill time so can be ready in about 30 minutes, and best of all, this dough is STABLE. I tested chilling and freezing and baking at different temperatures, and it performed so, so well.
The kind of Peanut Butter you use to make Peanut Butter Cookies does matter, so make sure to check out the ingredients section.
I also developed my Peanut Butter Blossom recipe using this same dough, so if you wanted to double it and make both, I highly recommend!
Important Ingredients and why I used them
There are a few ingredients in these Peanut Butter Cookies where it does matter what you use / they play an important role.
- Brown Butter. I love brown butter anything - if a recipe has melted butter in it, chances are I'm going to try and brown it. Brown butter gives these peanut butter cookies a super delicious depth of flavour. Both salted and unsalted work here- if you use salted you can either adjust the salt content or leave it as is if you like things a little saltier.
- Brown and Granulated (white) sugar. These both play a role - brown sugar helps with softness and thickness, while granulated sugar helps the cookie to spread and helps with chewiness.
- Peanut Butter. I use creamy (smooth) peanut butter for these cookies. I haven't tried it with crunchy peanut butter sorry!
- Crunchy Sugar. I love rolling cookies in crunchy sugar to finish them off - it gives amazing texture and makes them look a little bit sparkly. I use what we call 'raw' sugar, which is also called turbinado or demerara sugar in other places!
What is the best kind of Peanut Butter to use in Peanut Butter Cookies?
This is an important one - you want to use creamy / smooth peanut butter that is not natural peanut butter - so the one which stays totally homogenised in the jar. Natural peanut butter tends to separate when it sits, which can give uneven results.
It is important to also check if your peanut butter is salted or has no added salt as this can make a difference to the overall taste of the cookie (salting your baking is more important than you think!). I developed these with salted peanut butter, so if yours is no salt added you may want to adjust the salt content in the cookie.
A Quick Note on Brown Butter:
You will notice that there are two quantities of butter in the recipe - the initial quantity called for in the recipe (130g), and then a weighed out quantity in the method (100g). This is intentional and is not a typo.
When you brown butter, you are cooking off the water in the butter, and cooking the milk solids, which is what gives you the brown part of brown butter. Due to the loss of moisture, the overall volume of the butter when it goes from solid or melted butter to brown butter will decrease.
The recipe accounts for this which is why I have given you two quantities of butter. Butter varies internationally in how much fat / water it contains, so some butter will cook down to a lower yield than others depending on how much water you cook out, hence the need to re-weigh your butter once you have browned it.
Science for the win. Use a scale, my friends.
Do Peanut Butter Cookies have to have the fork marks?
I didn't grow up eating Peanut Butter Cookies, but from the research I have done, the double fork criss-cross is a classic on a peanut butter cookie.
For this particular recipe it is also needed in order to help press the cookie down before baking. If you bake them in balls like a regular cookie recipe they will still sink down slightly but they come out like peanut butter blossoms so are a different shape.
What kind of fork do you use for Peanut Butter Cookies?
Look - I have ADHD and I can tell you right now that not all forks are created equal. This applies to the kind that you use for pressing down your cookies too - you want one with quite long tines so that you get good coverage when pressing down on your cookie.
The fork on the left is my perfect squishing fork! It is nice and long and you get good criss cross coverage.
The pre-bake scoot
In the recipe you will see me mention squishing the cookies slightly into a disc shape after pressing down on them with the fork. What this does is just re-shape them nicely if they have changed shape when you press down on them.
It's a totally optional step but I like to 'scoot' them with a cookie cutter slightly larger than the disc of dough. It gives super nice even sides and means the cookies bake up really nice and evenly.
If you don't want to do this that's totally fine - I tested doing it and not doing it and there isn't a huge difference in the outcome
Do I have to roll Peanut Butter Cookies in sugar?
I love rolling anything that I can in crunchy sugar or sprinkles or something similar to give it texture and sometimes colour, but if you want your peanut butter cookies to stay plain then by all means go ahead!
Sometimes not rolling cookies in sugar if the recipe is developed to have it can change how they spread but this cookie is a very versatile girlie and as you can see by the image below, comes out exactly the same regardless of if you roll it or not.
I use what we call 'raw' sugar here but it is also sometimes called turbinado or demerara depending on where you live! I also tested rolling these in sprinkles (chocolate and rainbow) and they came out great.
Can Peanut Butter Cookies be made ahead of time?
I tested this every which way and can tell you - this cookie can stand up to a lot. I tested baking fresh, chilling the dough, and freezing the dough, and then baking at different temperatures to see how it held up, including defrosting the dough from frozen and baking it.
Usually when you are baking a cookie from frozen I suggest dropping the oven temperature, but as you can see from the test I did, baking at the same temperature as specified in the recipe (for this specific recipe) works fine!
So I am happy to report that you can make these cookies ahead of time a number of different ways. I also tested rolling them in sugar both before and after chilling / freezing and there wasn't a big difference.
Freeze the cookies once you have rolled into balls and pressed down with the fork, so you can bake them straight from frozen.
For all my tips and tricks on how to freeze other kinds of cookie dough, check out my post: How to freeze cookie dough and bake from frozen
One Dough, two recipes
When I was developing this peanut butter cookie recipe it occurred to me that it would make a perfect peanut butter blossom cookie - and I was correct. If you are the sort of person who likes to knock out two cookie recipes with one dough then this is the recipe for you! The dough is the exact same, just how you roll and bake them differs slightly.
Just an FYI that you can also do this with my raspberry thumbprint cookies and my snowball cookie recipe if that floats your boat!
How do you store Peanut Butter Cookies?
Store Peanut Butter Cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week - they will last fine but because they are quite soft to start with they may start to go a little soft.
Frequently Asked Questions
What tools and equipment do you use?
You can find a full list of the tools and equipment I use on my products page
Do I have to brown the butter?
I haven't tested this but it should be fine - just use 100g melted butter in the place of the 100g of brown butter.
Can I make these with other nut butters?
I haven't tested it sorry! You are welcome to try but I do not know what the outcome will be. If you're allergic to peanuts, a peanut butter cookie recipe might not be the one for you.
❤️ Made this recipe and love it? ❤️
I would LOVE for you to leave me a review and star rating below to let me know how you liked it! Also, please make sure to tag me on Instagram!
Answers to your baking questions
Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:
- baking in grams
- adjusting oven temperatures
- what kind of salt to use
- and many more!
I've curated and answered them all for your easy reference in this frequently asked questions post!
Seriously, the Best Damn Peanut Butter Cookies
- Author: Erin Clarkson
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Prep Time: 15 minutes -
Cook Time: 15 minutes
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Total Time: 30 minutes
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Yield: 18 cookies -
Category: Cookies -
Method: Baking -
Cuisine: American
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeDescription
I hate calling things 'the best' - but these easy peanut butter cookies really are the best (to me). Made with a no-chill brown butter peanut butter cookie dough, these cookies are quick to make, and the dough bakes amazingly from frozen, making them a great make-ahead option!
Ingredients
- 130g unsalted butter, cold from the fridge is fine
- 80g granulated sugar
- 80g brown sugar (light or dark is fine)
- 130g smooth peanut butter (not natural)
- 1 large egg (50g not including the shell), at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract
- 155g All-Purpose Flour
- ½ tsp (3g) kosher salt
- ½ tsp baking soda
- Turbinado / demerara sugar for rolling the cookies (alternatively use more granulated sugar or leave them plain)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325°f / 165°c. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper.
- Place the butter in a medium saucepan, and place over medium heat. Cook until the butter has melted, then continue cooking, stirring with a whisk, until the butter foams and turns golden brown and nutty - this should take about 3-4 minutes. Turn the heat down if you are worried it is going too fast - a good way to know that it is getting close is that it will start making much less noise as the butter boils.
- Weigh out 100g (see notes section below) of the brown butter into a medium bowl and leave it to sit for 10-15 minutes so that it does not scramble your eggs. To speed up this process, swirl the bowl often, or you can place the bowl in a larger bowl of cold water and whisk the butter frequently until it cools.
- Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, peanut butter, egg, and vanilla to the bowl. Mix using an electric hand mixer or a whisk (or you can do this using the paddle attachment in a stand mixer) until the mixture has thickened and lightened in colour.
- Add the flour, salt, and baking soda, and mix until just combined.
- Place the sugar you are using to roll the cookies into a small bowl. Using a size #40 cookie scoop, scoop 35g balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets. Roll each ball of dough between your palms to shape it into a ball, then roll each ball in the sugar (I find it easiest to pop it into the bowl and shake the bowl to cover evenly). Arrange the cookies on the baking sheet - I can usually fit 12 per sheet but if you want to divide them evenly then that works too.
- Using a fork, press a criss-cross pattern into the tops of the cookies. This will compress them slightly - you shouldn’t have to push super hard. Once you have pressed the fork into the cookies, either use your fingers to make the cookies into an even disc shape that is slightly thicker than the pressed down cookie, or my favourite method is to use the ‘scoot’ - use a cookie cutter or something else round slightly larger than the cookie and swirl it around the cookie to make a nice even puck of cookie dough.
- Bake the cookies for 12-13 minutes (I do one pan at a time), until the edges are set and are lightly golden brown. They may still look a little under done in the middles - this is fine.
- Remove the cookies from the oven and, if desired, use a cookie cutter slightly larger than the cookie to ‘scoot’ them into a perfectly round shape.
- Leave the cookies to cool on the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Store cookies at room temperature in an airtight container for up to a week.
Notes
You will notice that there are two quantities of butter in the recipe - the initial quantity of butter, then a second measurement in the method which is the quantity of brown butter. The larger initial quantity is to account for water loss when browning - read more about that in my FAQ.
If you are using the recipe scaling feature (2x or 3x) be aware that any quantities, measurements, pan sizes, and cooking times given in the method do not scale automatically - it's only the quantities in the Ingredient List that scale automatically.
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