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Easy Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe – delicious soft, chewy, and pillowy cookies bursting with classic rich peanut butter flavor!
We tested lots of different recipes and methods and found the best easy way to make classic chewy peanut butter cookies.
This recipe is our favorite for easy peanut butter cookies – they have that perfect rich peanut flavor, are super simple, and are loaded with sweet nutty flavor!
We hope you love this recipe as much as we do.
Don’t want all the extras in a recipe post? We provide a skip to recipe button in the top left corner, as well as a clickable table of contents, just below, to help make this page easier to navigate.
At Sweet C’s, I add lots of tips in all of my recipes – because I am a home cook without any formal training, and I find I am more confident making dishes when I understand why it works, and what each ingredient means to the flavor of a recipe – my goal is for even the most beginner home cook to feel empowered in the kitchen.
I want each reader to walk away with a solid knowledge of each recipe, with all of the tips I’ve gathered from extensive testing of each recipe. I also answer questions my friends and family have asked about my recipes, to help everyone better understand the processes we use – and why!
Table of contents
Easy Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies
There is nothing better than a soft and chewy peanut butter cookie with a crunchy bottom and criss-crossed top, rolled in crunchy sugar. It’s nostalgic, sweet, salty, and packed with flavor – and thankfully, crazy easy to whip up.
We know you’re going to love this recipe for classic chewy peanut butter cookies – its one of our favorite cookies recipes because:
- It is crazy easy – no special ingredients or fancy equipment required!
- These peanut butter cookies taste just like the old fashioned chewy peanut butter cookies grandma used to make.
- These cookies are soft, chewy, and great to dunk – get a cold glass of milk ready to enjoy them with!
Tips to Perfect Peanut Butter Cookies
This recipe is designed enough to be super simple, so even beginner cooks can make it with confidence, but we have found a couple of helpful hints to make your cookies great.
Some of our top tips for making perfect, chewy, soft peanut butter cookies that taste just like the nostalgic classic bakery style are below:
- You can use butter instead of shortening for this recipe – but the shortening gives the classic chewy peanut butter cookie texture just like from a bakery.
- We use butter-flavored shortening for the perfect flavor and soft, chewy texture!
- Do not use all-natural peanut butter in this recipe – the oil ratio is off, and will cause texture problems. This recipe was designed for peanut butters that are not all-natural brands.
Easy Cookies You’ll Love
If you’re looking for more delicious easy cookie recipes that we can’t get enough of, be sure to check out our sugar cookie bars, our chewy chocolate chip cookies, soft sugar cookies, and our lofthouse style cookies – as well as some of our favorite recent cookies:
You can find our complete cookie recipe archives here. Find our dessert recipe index here.
Recipe FAQs
Peanut butter cookies are done after 9-12 minutes, when the sides start to turn a light brown color and they look puffy and firmer.
Bake peanut butter cookies at 350 degrees in a well preheated oven for best results.
Peanut butter cookies can be stored in an airtight container and kept in a cool, dry place for up to 2 weeks – if they can last that long!
We like to freeze individual balls of cookie dough for baking later. Simply form dough as you would just up to baking (roll it in sugar, and make the criss-cross pattern on the top on top of parchment paper on a baking sheet) – and pop the baking sheet in the freezer, instead of the oven. Once the dough has set after about an hour or two, you can transfer dough balls into a bag together (this way they wont freeze into a giant clump and will be individual cookie shapes instead).
When you want a fresh peanut butter cookie, place it directly on parchment paper and bake just like you would a fresh cookie, but for a little bit longer!
Easy Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe
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Easy Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter flavored shortening room temp
- ¾ cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup light brown sugar packed
- 1 3.4 oz. box instant vanilla pudding mix unprepared
- 2 large eggs
- 1 additional large egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup granulated sugar optional coating
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, set aside for later.
- In a large mixing bowl, cream the shortening, peanut butter, and sugar together until smooth.
- Add the unprepared pudding powder, eggs, additional egg yolk, and vanilla, beating after each addition. Beat for about one minute on medium speed until well combined.
- In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.
- Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stirring as you add, ½ cup at a time, and mix until combined.
- Use a medium sized cookie scoop to measure out the cookie dough into balls, and then roll the dough between your palms.
- Pour a little granulated sugar on a plate.
- Roll the balls in granulated sugar.
- Place the balls of dough on the prepared cookie sheet about two inches apart. Use a fork to gently press the balls flat, making two indents with the fork tines, criss-crossing the marks at the cop of each cookie.
- Bake for 9 to 12 minutes – when the sides start to gently brown – then let rest on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
