These Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies are super soft and chewy, and filled full of toasted oats and peanut butter. There is no chill time in the recipe, so you can have these ready to go in about 30 minutes!
Hi hi! I am just popping in to share this Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie recipe with you! I developed these when I went down an Oatmeal Cookie recipe rabbithole, which started with my Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. It was such a good base recipe that I couldn't help myself and had to add in some peanut butter, which was a very good idea.
These peanut butter oatmeal cookies are soft, chewy, and packed full of flavour. They start with a brown butter base, then we add toasted oats, loads of peanut butter, and malted milk powder. There is zero chill time so you can have them ready to go in about 30 minutes!
I love a large cookie so I made them huge, but you can easily scale back if you need! They keep for up to a week in an airtight container. Promise you'll love them. If you're after a raisin situation, check out my Oatmeal Raisin Cookies too which were also part of the oatmeal cookie rabbithole!
My Best Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
There are a few things that make these, to me, the ultimate peanut butter oatmeal cookie:
- Soft and Chewy. I wanted a cookie that was on the thicker side, but super soft and chewy. We got there by playing around with the sugar ratios, and adding enough butter so that they spread nicely without getting too thin.
- Brown Butter. I put brown butter in so many things. It's just the best, it gives the most amazing flavour to recipes, especially cookies. If you want more recipes using it, I have lots of brown butter recipes for you!
- Toasted Oats. I used this technique in my Oatmeal Chocolate chip cookie recipe and loved how it gave the cookies texture, so I used it again for the peanut butter oatmeal. You don't have to toast them, but it's worth it, promise.
- Malted Milk. Malted milk is best friends with peanut butter and brown butter. This is an optional ingredient and if you don't have it you can leave it out as it is a flavour enhancer rather than a thickener, but it's so good!
What is the best Peanut Butter to use for Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies?
I prefer a 'creamy' style peanut butter - not natural peanut butter. Creamy peanut butter has been mixed until it has emulsified, which means that there is no separation of the oil and the rest of the peanut butter. Something like Jif or Skippy works - in NZ I use the Pam's one usually.
If it is super cold, your peanut butter might be a tiny bit solid, just pop it in the microwave for 5-10 seconds until it softens. I was able to mix it in just using a whisk into the wet ingredients.
I haven't tried crunchy peanut butter but it should work! If you use peanut butter without any added salt you may have to add some salt to the recipe.
Cookies with malted milk powder
Malted milk powder is a milk powder based product with a few other ingredients added too - it was originally formulated to help babies with digestion. It works particularly well in this recipe as it goes so well with the peanut butter.
You can get malted milk powder online - in NZ I use Horlicks from the supermarket. It tastes slightly different but you get the same outcome - very delicious cookies.
If you do not have malted milk powder on hand you can just omit it from the recipe - it is a flavour enhancer and doesn't change the texture of the recipe so you can just leave it out.
Toasted Oats
This is another optional step - toasting the oats. This just gives them a bit more of a toasty flavour, adding amazing depth into the peanut butter oatmeal cookie. It only takes about 10 minutes - I like to do it while I brown the butter so that they can cool while I do the first part of making the peanut butter oatmeal cookie batter.
If you are wondering what the best sort of oats are to use in Oatmeal cookies - I like Old Fashioned Oats. These are the ones that are just squished regular oats - so not a quick cooking oat or a rolled oat. They provide the best texture in my opinion.
I haven't tried them with quick oats or rolled oats sorry - I would stay away from quick cooking if I were you. They will get really gluggy.
How to freeze Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
There are two ways of going about this:
- Freeze the baked cookies. Once the cookies are totally cool, freeze in an airtight container for up to a few months. Defrost at room temperature - they will benefit from a little refresh in the microwave before you eat them.
- Freeze the cookie dough (my preferred method). Place the dough on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and freeze until solid, then transfer to an airtight container. When you bake from frozen, drop the oven temperature to 325°f / 160°c and add a few minutes onto the bake time.
For all my tips and tricks on freezing cookie dough and cookies, check out my post: How to freeze cookie dough and bake from frozen
How to store Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Store your peanut butter oatmeal cookies in an airtight container for up to a week. They are best in the first few days, but they keep super well! I keep mine at room temperature.
Recipe Development for Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
The recipe development for this oatmeal cookie series wasn't too tricky once I nailed down my oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. I started with that recipe as the base and made a few changes:
- Removed the chocolate. Obvious step.
- Kept the brown butter. However, I removed adding in the milk powder like you do in the chocolate chip cookies. Because of the peanut butter, the brown butter, toasted oats, and malted milk powder already do a ton of flavour work.
- Played around with sugar ratios. Initially when I made these, I used the same ratios as the chocolate chip oatmeal recipe, but changed to have a higher ratio of white sugar to give spread and chew.
- Spread. The initial test didn't spread as much as I would have liked - they baked up as rocks. They were still delicious but I knew something needed to change, so I reduced the amount of peanut butter (the original test had 200g), dropped the amount of flour I was using, and increased the oats in the recipe. This, combined with changing the ratio of white to brown sugar, sorted it out straight away and gave me perfect, soft and chewy peanut butter oatmeal cookies.
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
Can I add mix-ins?
I haven't tried it, but adding in chocolate chips or toasted nuts would proabably work super well. I would add no more than 150g of mix-ins. It may change how they bake up in terms of thickness but should be fine!
For more easy cookie recipes, check out:
❤️ 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!
Soft and Chewy 30 Minute Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
- Author: Erin Clarkson
-
Prep Time: 15 minutes -
Cook Time: 15 minutes
-
Total Time: 30 minutes
-
Yield: 10 cookies -
Category: cookies -
Method: baking -
Cuisine: american
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeDescription
These Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies are super soft and chewy, and filled full of toasted oats and peanut butter. There is no chill time in the recipe, so you can have these ready to go in about 30 minutes!
Ingredients
- 150g old fashioned oats (cooks down to 135g, if you are not toasting the oats, use 135g)
- 130g unsalted butter, cold from the fridge is fine.
- 100g granulated sugar
- 60g brown sugar
- 130g smooth peanut butter
- 1 large egg (50g not including the shell), at room temperature
- 90g All-Purpose Flour
- 45g malted milk powder
- ½ tsp (3g) kosher salt
- ½ tsp baking soda
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°f / 180°c. Place the oats on a sheet pan. Bake, stirring occasionally, until the oats are lightly golden brown, 10-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
- Weigh out 135g of the toasted oats (they shrink down in the oven a tiny bit so you may need to top up again if needed).
- While the Oats are toasting, place the butter in a medium saucepan, and place over medium heat. Cook until the butter has melted, and then continue to cook, swirling the pan often and stirring with a whisk, until the butter foams and turns golden brown and nutty - this should take 3-4 minutes.
- Weigh out 100g (see Notes section below) of the brown butter into a medium bowl and leave to cool for 15-20 minutes so that it does not scramble your eggs.
- If you want to do this quickly you can place the bowl in the fridge and stir regularly, or place the bowl into a larger bowl of ice and stir regularly until cool.
- Add the brown sugar and granulated sugar into the bowl with the brown butter. Whisk until combined. Add the peanut butter and egg, and whisk by hand or using an electric mixer until the mixture is well combined, thicker in texture and slightly lighter in colour.
- Add in the toasted oats, flour, malted milk powder, salt, and baking soda.
- Using a #20 (3 tbsp) cookie scoop, scoop out balls of cookie dough (about 75g balls) and arrange on the pans. I can fit 5-6 cookies per pan.
- Bake the cookies either one pan at a time or both at the same time if your oven can handle it, for 12-13 minutes, until the cookies are puffy and set around the edges, and lightly golden brown.
- Remove the pan from the oven and if desired, use a cookie cutter slightly larger than the cookie to ‘scoot’ them into a perfectly round shape. Repeat the baking process with the second pan of cookies.
- Cool on the pans for 10-15 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to a week.
Notes
If you choose not to toast the oats, just skip the toasting step, and use 135g untoasted old fashioned oats in the recipe.
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.
Keywords: peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies, peanut butter oatmeal cookies
The post Soft and Chewy 30 Minute Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies appeared first on Cloudy Kitchen.
