If there is a Hall of Fame for cookies, peanut butter cookies hold a place of honor, along with chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin. They also happen to be my mother’s favorite cookie, the one cookie she requests when I’m in a cookie making mood.
The cookies are easy to make! The one gotcha is that in order to hold their cross hatch shape, it helps to chill the dough for several hours before baking.
Updated from the recipe archive. First posted in 2005.
Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe
You can use either smooth or crunchy peanut butter for this recipe. Smooth peanut butter will give you a smoother consistency. Crunchy will give you some bits of peanuts throughout the cookie.
You can chill the dough for less time than the 3 hours the recipe calls for, but it does help the cookies to keep their shape if the dough is completely chilled, which it should be by the 3 hour mark.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick, 4 ounces), room temperature
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1 egg
- 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Method
1 Beat the butter until creamy, 2 minutes. Add the sugars, beat for 2 more minutes. Mix in the peanut butter and the egg. Vigorously whisk together the dry ingredients— the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt—in a separate bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into the sugar butter mixture.
2 Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 3 hours.
3 Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Shape the dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Place the balls of dough about 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten in crisscross pattern with a fork.
4 Bake until light brown, about 9 to 10 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and let cool in their baking sheets for a minute. After a minute, transfer the cookies to a rack to cool completely.
For chewier cookies, bake at 300°F (150°C) for 15 minutes.
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Showing 4 of 170 Comments
Recently I made cashew butter cookies – from a peanut butter cookie recipe, but with fresh cashew butter instead. They were very interesting, and not at all bad. More like a sugar cookie in flavor, the cashew flavor didn’t come through as well as peanut does. I had to add a little extra sugar because the cashew butter had no added sugar like most peanut butters do.
When I saw this recipe and the mouth-watering picture, I just had to make them today. They are awesome!!! The tip about the longer cooking time in the slower oven created just the chew I was looking for.
Thank you for sharing this and all the other fabulous recipes.
Thanks a lot for the cookie recipe. They were a hit at my cocktail party. Thanks a lot.
These cookies are GREAT!