Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

These peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are packed with peanut butter and chocolate chips, and have the texture of a bakery chocolate chip cookie! An easy chewy cookie you can make in under 30 minutes with no need to chill the cookie dough!

One bite, and it was over. After years of development, I had finally perfected peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. There is a rich peanut butter flavor in the brown sugar cookie that stays thick and chewy! They don’t need to chill or rest or even really cream. You can make these from start to finish in under 30 minutes!

So preheat your oven, all you chocolate peanut butter fanatics, and get ready for a life-changing cookie experience. These will be a regular bake sale request, along with cream cheese chocolate chip cookies, white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, and squares of milk chocolate brownies! Get ready to be the most popular baker on the block!

Ingredients & Substitutions

• All-Purpose Flour
• Baking Soda and Baking Powder
• Kosher Salt
• Granulated Sugar: Granulated sugar helps the cookies spread and contributes to those slightly crisp edges. It also works with the butter during creaming to incorporate a small amount of air, which this recipe intentionally keeps minimal.
• Light Brown Sugar: Brown sugar is what keeps these cookies thick, moist, and chewy. Its molasses content helps retain moisture during baking and balances the dry, sandy texture that peanut butter can create on its own. You can substitute dark brown sugar with no problem, but do not swap in 100% white sugar or the cookies will flatten and spread.
• Unsalted Butter
• Smooth Peanut Butter: I specifically use smooth Jiff peanut butter in these cookies, forever and always. I prefer its flavor to that of other no-stir peanut butter brands. Keep up your peanut butter trend with some Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Cookies!
• Egg: The egg binds the dough and provides the moisture and protein that help the cookies set with a soft, cohesive interior instead of crumbling like shortbread.
• Vanilla Extract
• Chocolate Chips: I use a mix of semi-sweet and bittersweet chocolate chips for contrasting flavors and to balance the sweetness. If you want to overwhelm yourself with chocolate, head over to my chocolate pound cake or chocolate-filled cupcakes recipes! Regarding chocolate chips, Ghirardelli is my brand of choice, but Toll House chocolate has never let me down.

See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

Variations on These Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

• Crunchy Peanut Butter. Use crunchy peanut butter in place of smooth for a little added texture in every bite, but weigh your flour carefully since the extra solids can shift the dough’s balance.
• Oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip cookies: Combine ideas from this recipe and the one for my best oatmeal raisin cookies, and you’ve got something delicious on your hands. Just add ½ a cup of quick oats! The natural creamy taste of peanut butter with oatmeal also shows up in my peanut butter banana energy bites, and it’s a home run!
• Turn them into bars: You could adapt this recipe to make them in bar form! I recommend lining your baking dish with parchment paper for easy removal. You can also bake them in a skillet like this pizookie!
• Make them mini:. I’m a sucker for bite-sized treats, so why not portion them extra small like my bite-sized pecan tassies? Just be careful to watch them, since the bake time will be different!

Professional Tips

• Barely cream. For the thickest, chewiest cookies, just barely cream the butter and sugars. Mixing them entirely by hand is totally on the table!
• Add the flour in small additions. Add the flour mixture in small additions so you don’t overwhelm the batter. I wait until the flour is barely incorporated before adding the next round, just like when making these thick chocolate chip cookies!
• Scoop before chilling. If you plan to refrigerate or freeze the dough, portion the balls first. Chilled dough is nearly impossible to scoop cleanly, and frozen dough straight from the freezer bakes at 325°F convection or 350°F conventional for 15 minutes until the edges begin to brown.
• Press extra chocolate onto the tops. Reserve a small handful of chips or M&Ms and press them onto the tops of each dough ball right before the pan goes in the oven. It guarantees visible chocolate in every cookie and is worth the extra thirty seconds. For another cookie that uses this same press-on technique to great effect, my monster cookie recipe layers M&Ms, oats, and chips the same way.

How to Make Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Use these instructions to make the perfect peanut butter chocolate chip cookies every time! Further details and measurements can be found in the recipe card below!

Step 1: Whisk the dry ingredients. Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and whisk until evenly distributed. Set the bowl aside.

Step 2: Cream the butter and sugars. Add the butter and sugars to your mixer bowl and beat only until a smooth paste forms. You are looking for the mixture to just come together, not turn pale or fluffy.

Over-creaming here aerates the fat, causing the cookies to spread and puff rather than stay thick and chewy. You can make this dough with an electric hand mixer as well.

Step 3: Beat in the egg, vanilla, and peanut butter. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl so nothing gets left behind. Then add the peanut butter and beat until the mixture is completely smooth.

Step 4: Add the dry ingredients in small additions. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture a little at a time, waiting until each addition is just barely incorporated before adding the next. You are not waiting for the flour to fully disappear before adding more, but you do not want to dump it all in at once and overwhelm the dough.

Step 5: Fold in the chocolate chips. Add the chips and mix briefly, just until they are evenly distributed throughout the dough. A few extra turns will not ruin anything, but there is no reason to keep mixing once you see even distribution.

If you want to guarantee chocolate in every bite, reserve a small handful to press into the tops of the dough balls just before baking, which is what I always do.

Step 6: Scoop the dough balls. Portion the dough before chilling. Once the dough is cold, it becomes much harder to scoop cleanly, and forcing a cookie scoop through chilled dough is genuinely frustrating. Roll or scoop the balls now, while the dough is pliable.

Tip: I made mine about 70g each, roughly the size of a golf ball.

Step 7: Chill or bake immediately. This dough is genuinely flexible. You can bake the portioned balls right away, refrigerate them for up to 3 days, or freeze them for up to 3 months and bake straight from frozen.

Step 8: Bake the cookies. Preheat the oven to 325°F convection or 350°F conventional. Arrange the dough balls on a parchment-lined baking sheet with enough room to spread. Bake until the edges are golden brown and the centers no longer look wet or doughy. From room temperature, that is just under 10 minutes. From frozen, plan on a solid 15 minutes. The centers will still look soft when you pull the pan, and that is exactly right. They firm up as they cool on the pan, and pulling them at that moment is what keeps the interior thick and chewy rather than cakey.

Step 9: Cool and serve. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Or, as I have been known to do, just enjoy one directly from the pan. No judgment.

Recipe FAQs

Before You Go

If you make these Easter M&M cookies, I hope they disappear from the plate faster than you expect. Browse more ideas in Cookie Recipes or head right over to these peanut butter brownies!