Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies with Peanut Butter Chips

It's hard to improve on a classic like peanut butter cookies but by golly I think I've done it. These thick and chewy peanut butter cookies are made with creamy peanut butter and have loads of peanut butter chips in them which give them the perfect chewy peanut butter cookie texture. This recipe makes just 13 cookies, but you can scale the recipe up to make more if you want!

My peanut butter chip cookie recipe follows a pretty standard cookie dough process. It's super simple. It's an easy drop cookie recipe (like my popular chocolate m&m cookies), with the classic peanut butter cookie cross-hatched fork pattern on top, which flattens the dough so the cookies spread outward in the oven.

If you have your ingredients out and at the right temperatures before you fire up your mixer, the cookie dough will come together in just under 10 minutes. You can make these peanut butter cookies in less than an hour if you want to!

This is a no-chill cookie dough so you can bake them right away (I usually do). But in case you don't want to, I tested it all sorts of ways. The good news is peanut butter cookie dough is VERY forgiving. You can chill the cookie dough in the fridge before baking (I tested up to 48 hours) or freeze the flattened, cross-hatched cookie dough balls without changing the recipe or the bake time at all. They come out delicious and perfectly chewy no matter what.

Special Ingredient Notes

Here are the ingredients that you'll need to make my chewy peanut butter cookie recipe! See recipe card (at the end of the blog post) for quantities.

Peanut Butter - To make my peanut butter cookie recipe you need a creamy, no-stir, emulsified peanut butter like JIF, Skippy, or the store-brand equivalent. Basically, the kind of peanut butter that doesn't separate with the oily layer on top. I did test these cookies with a "crunchy" peanut butter that had chopped peanuts in it and it made the cookies more dry and crispy than chewy, so I don't recommend it.

Peanut Butter Chips - I will never pass up an opportunity to add chips of some sort to a cookie. In these cookies I used Reese's Peanut Butter baking chips which you can find in the baking aisle of the grocery store. You could also use mini peanut butter M&Ms if you can't find peanut butter chips, but I prefer the way the peanut butter chips seamlessly blend into the cookies, like they almost aren't there until you bite into one.

Making Simple Peanut Butter Cookie Dough

Start by mixing the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together in a mixing bowl. Set it aside until ready to use.

Then move on to creaming the peanut butter, softened butter, and both sugars together on medium to medium-high speed until well combined and cohesive, about 3-4 minutes. If you rub a bit of it between your fingers it should feel just a little bit grainy.

It's really important that your butter is properly softened for this step. A lot of peanut butter cookie recipes incorporate the peanut butter separately because if the regular butter is too cold it will turn into little butter globules encased in peanut butter instead of mixing cohesively with the peanut butter. I hate extra steps if I can avoid them, so I mix the peanut butter, butter, and both sugars all at once. The sugars are abrasive and help cream the butter and peanut butter together, but if you haven't softened the butter first it'll take a lot longer for them to mix nicely.

Scrape down the bowl again. Add the dry ingredients all at once and mix again on the lowest speed just until a few streaks of flour are visible.

I use a damp fork to cross-hatch my peanut butter cookies

Use a #20 (3 tablespoon) cookie scoop to scoop thirteen cookie dough balls. Scrape the edge of the scoop flat on the rim of the bowl and you'll have exactly enough cookie dough for 13 cookies.

Arrange the peanut butter cookies on a parchment-lined sheet pan about 2-3 inches apart from each other. Roll the dough into smooth balls with your hands.

Use a damp fork to gently flatten and make the cross-hatch pattern on top of the peanut butter cookies. This prevents the fork from sticking to the cookie dough and gives a crisper, sharper pattern on top.

As soon as you pull the cookies out of the oven, use a round cookie cutter (or the wide mouth of an upside down mug, glass, or bowl) to scoot the peanut butter cookies into perfectly round shapes. Use something that's just a little bit bigger than the cookies, not too much bigger.

Scooting the peanut butter cookies isn't just for aesthetics. Scooting the edges in gives you cookies that are evenly thick across (no thin, crispy edges!) and it collapses some of the air in the cookies, giving them the most perfect chewy texture.

Practical Tips, Recipe Notes, and Variations

• Properly softened butter should be cool to the touch but soft enough that you can press a finger into it. Microwave a stick of butter for 3-4 seconds per side to soften it quickly.
• The peanut butter cookies will look slightly underbaked when you pull them out of the oven but will finish cooking as they cool on the baking sheet. Use a spatula to transfer them to the cooling rack while they're still warm so they don't break apart on you!
• To quickly bring the egg to room temperature, submerge it in hot tap water for 5-10 minutes before using it.
• These are SO good with a peanut butter cup on top. I use the regular-size peanut butter cups and place them in the center of the cookie right after they come out of the oven, before I scoot them. Scooting then smushes the warm dough around the edges of the peanut butter cup, so it melts into a gorgeous chocolate peanut butter puddle!

📖 Recipe