My Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies pair a buttery, chewy cookie base with crunchy peanuts and chocolate chips. Just 30 minutes to chill! Recipe includes a how-to video!
Perfect Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
These soft and chewy peanut butter chocolate chip cookies will become your new favorite cookies! My recipe is straightforward and simple as it blends classic chocolate chip cookies with creamy peanut butter. There’s just a bit of chilling involved (30 minutes), but when they’re done you’ll be rewarded with perfectly textured little masterpieces.
Today’s cookies are a bit different from the peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies I recently shared; we’re adding a bit of honey for flavor plus some crunchy roasted peanuts. I also swapped out the chopped semisweet chocolate bars for milk chocolate chips, because I absolutely adore peanut butter and milk chocolate together (reminds me of peanut butter blossoms!).
Why you will love my recipe:
- Uses melted butter for easy mixing and a buttery flavor.
- Strong peanut butter flavor bolstered by a touch of honey.
- Ready in just over an hour!
- Crunchy peanuts and chocolate chips add the perfect texture.
What You Need
A handful of ingredients come together to make these perfectly peanut buttery cookies:
- Peanut butter. Do NOT use a “natural” peanut butter that separates! I love natural peanut butter for sandwiches, just not for baking (it can make cookies turn out crumbly and dry). Crunchy or creamy peanut butter both work fine here.
- Unsalted butter. Using melted butter gives these peanut butter chocolate chip cookies a buttery flavor and makes mixing the dough by hand a breeze. Using unsalted butter is especially important in a recipe like this where we’re adding salted ingredients like peanut butter.
- Honey. Honey complements the peanut butter flavor in these cookies so nicely, plus it adds softness and chew to the cookies.
- Peanuts. I love chopping up some roasted peanuts and adding them to the cookie dough for a nice texture and crunch. You can always leave these out if you prefer.
- Chocolate chips. I typically recommend semisweet chocolate for my chocolate chip cookies, but there’s just something about pairing milk chocolate and peanut butter together that is hard to beat! Save a few chocolate chips for pressing into the tops of your cookies after they come out of the oven–this gives a bakery style look!
SAM’S TIP: Make sure your butter isn’t too hot when you add the sugars; if it is, you could melt your sugars and create a runny cookie dough that will melt all over your cookie sheets. The bowl your butter is in should not feel warm to the touch.
This is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Stir the butter, peanut butter, and sugars until well combined.
- Add the honey, eggs, and vanilla and stir well.
- Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then gradually add them to the wet ingredients.
- Fold in the chocolate chips and peanuts until incorporated.
- Cover and chill the dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 4 days (this develops the flavor and keeps them from spreading too much!)
- Scoop and roll the dough into 2-tablespoon sized balls.
- Bake on parchment lined baking sheets for 11-12 minutes at 350F.
- Let cool completely on the baking sheets before enjoying.
SAM’S TIP: One of my favorite tricks for soft and chewy cookies is slightly underbaking them in the oven and allowing them to finish cooking on their sheets outside the oven. Don’t remove the cookies from the baking sheet until they’ve completely cooled though, or you could risk breaking the cookies (they’re fragile when warm!).
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! This dough can be made up to 4 days in advance. If you plan to make your cookie dough in advance, make sure to store it in an airtight container in the fridge. It will need to sit a room temperature for a bit to soften before you can scoop and roll it.
Absolutely! Just follow the instructions for drop cookies in my how to freeze cookie dough post.
This can happen from over-measuring your flour, over-working your dough, or over-baking your cookies. It’s pretty hard to over-work your cookie dough when mixing by hand vs using a mixer, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue here. To avoid the other issues, use a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients and remember that it’s okay for your cookies to look a bit underdone when you take them out of the oven (they’ll finish cooking on their baking sheets!).
Note, this is an updated recipe. If you’re looking for the old recipe (essentially my peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips added), you can find a PDF printout in the recipe below.
Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter melted and then cooled until no longer warm to the touch
- 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
- 1 cup (200 g) light brown sugar firmly packed
- 1 cup (264 g) creamy peanut butter (see note)
- 3 Tablespoons honey
- 2 large eggs room temperature preferred
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 ¼ cups (410 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (255 g) milk chocolate chips
- 1 (140 g) heaping cup dry-roasted peanuts coarsely chopped
Recommended Equipment
Instructions
- Combine melted, cooled butter, both sugars, and peanut butter in a large mixing bowl and stir well.1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar, 1 cup (200 g) light brown sugar, 1 cup (264 g) creamy peanut butter
- Add honey, eggs, and vanilla extract and stir well until batter is cohesive.3 Tablespoons honey, 2 large eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- In a separate, medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.3 ¼ cups (410 g) all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt
- Gradually stir dry ingredients into wet until thoroughly combined.
- Add chocolate chips and peanuts and stir well.1 cup (255 g) milk chocolate chips, 1 (140 g) heaping cup dry-roasted peanuts
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes and up to several hours.
- Once dough is nearly ready to bake, preheat oven to 350F (175C) and line several baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Remove dough from refrigerator and scoop into about 2 Tablespoon-sized balls. To make cookies more uniform and round, roll them between your palms into a smooth ball before placing on baking sheet. Space cookies at least 2” apart.
- Transfer baking sheet to center rack of 350F (175C) oven and bake for 11-12 minutes. Cookies may appear slightly underdone in the centers, this is fine. Allow cookies to cool completely on baking sheet before removing and enjoying.
Notes
Peanut butter
May substitute crunchy peanut butter. For best results, avoid “natural” peanut butter where the oil separates out on top, as this can give the cookies a poor texture.Storing
Cookie dough may be covered and chilled for up to 4 days. It may need to sit at room temp to warm a bit to be soft enough for scooping. After baking and cooling, store cookies in an airtight container for up to one week.Original Recipe
I originally published a peanut butter chocolate chip recipe several years ago. It was essentially just my peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips added, so I have modified it to make something more unique and more complementary of the chocolate chips. If you’re looking for the original recipe, the original recipe can be found here.Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
A
Can we omit the chopped peanuts? Thanks!
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
Yes! We cover this in the post 😊
R
Hi, Sam. I tried these cookies and they came out so soft and perfect, thank you!!!
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
We’re so happy to hear it! Thanks for coming back to leave a review ❤️
Mary
Why no cornstarch in this recipe? I am looking forward to making them.
Sam
Hi Mary! Honestly, it just wasn’t necessary in this recipe. I did test it with cornstarch, but I felt it didn’t add anything to the cookie. 🙂
Serena
I am trying to figure out what I did wrong, but these cookies didn’t work well for me. tasted absoloutly wonderful, but they never spread. they stayed in the ball I rolled them into and never flattened out and so I had cookie balls instead of cookies. only thing I did differently was do cooled brown butter instead of regular. Do you think that caused them to not flatten?
Sam
Hi Serena! Unfortunately, the brown butter was likely the cause here. Browning butter reduces the liquid in the butter which likely caused your issue. 🙁
Cara
Ok, so I loved you and your blog/recipes before, but I REALLY love you now!!! I don’t know if you’ve been doing this for a while and I just haven’t come across a recipe like that or if you just started, but THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for adding the measurements of the ingredients in the directions part of the recipe!!! I have only came across one other recipe blog that does this. It takes up so much time to keep having to scroll back up to the list of ingredients! So again thank you so much for saving me so much time!
💜 Cara
Sam
Hi Cara! I’m so glad you have enjoyed the recipes so much and I’m glad to hear that the new change is helpful. I am working on getting all of my recipes updated to look that way. 🙂
Laurena Schmitz
That’s a lot of calories per cookie considering you can’t eat just one or even 2!! Restraint is not my strong point. Arghhh, but am making them today.
Sam
It’s a good day to forget how to count! 🤣 I hope you love them! 🙂
Terry
😱 For these cookies, you need to use Counting 101: 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1,…🤣
Wonder how they’d be with my new jar of dark roast peanut butter? Hmm…maybe!
Sam
🤣 The dark roasted peanut butter sounds awesome! 🙂
Christina B
I made your plain peanut butter cookies the other day which were a huge hit. I had added in some chips as per the request of my husband but after I saw you had other variations so today I made these. These are absolutely fabulous. Perfect mix of creamy and crispy!!! Hubby loves them and has already requested more.
Just FYI, I see the video for this recipe on my desktop but it didn’t show up when I was using my ipad. Guessing that’s an IT issue.
Sam
I’m so glad everyone enjoyed them so much, Christina! Thank you for letting me know about the video I will check into it. 🙂
Tiffany Wall
Your cookie recipes are to die for!! The only change I made was that I substituted dark chocolate chips for milk chocolate. My family and I thank you for another amazing cookie recipe. 🙂
Sugar Spun Run
Thank you so much, Tiffany! I am so glad that you loved them! 🙂
Natalie Galloway
Best peanut butter cookies I’ve ever made!
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed them, Natalie! 🙂
Dina
Hey Sam! I am obsessed with this recipe! So peanut buttery and delicious. I have a question, if I freeze the dough balls, do I have to thaw them out before baking? Or can I bake them straight from the freezer?
Thank you!
Sam
Hi Dina! I am so glad you enjoy the cookies so much! You should be able to bake them from frozen they will just take a minute or two longer in the oven. 🙂
Stef
Just a quick question! I’ve made your Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk cookies many times before and have loved them every time so I’m wondering how does this one compares. I noticed this recipe doesn’t call for cornstarch so I’m assuming it probably won’t have the same tenderness. Your PB chocolate chunk recipe has been my favourite pb cookie so far but my one issue is the peanut butter flavour being too subtle. Would you say this recipe has a stronger or less strong pb flavour in them?
Thanks!
Sam
Hi Stef! They are both really similar. They should have a pretty good peanut butter flavor to them. Sometimes if it’s not strong enough there may be a little too much flour in the batter. I’m glad you have enjoyed them so much! 🙂
Anj
Once again, an ace recipe from Sam. When is the cookbook coming?
Sam
Thank you so much! I don’t have a timeframe on a cookbook, but I do plan to do one in the future. 🙂
Harriet
Just finished a batch of these PB/choc chip cookies. It was a very nice dough to work with. I liked that I got 57 cookies for all my efforts. Enough for sharing! I have made several of your recipes over time. Thank you! ❤️
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
We’re so happy you enjoyed them, Harriet! Thanks for commenting ❤️
Kelly
I have made this recipe and LOVE it! Can you refrigerate the dough overnight or 24 hrs?
Sam
So glad you like the recipe, Kelly! YES, you can make in advance and refrigerate overnight/24 hours, just make sure to cover the dough very well with plastic wrap or store in an airtight container. 🙂
Kelly
Awesome cookie recipe! They are buttery, and taste amazing! I love this one and the Worst Chocolate Chip cookies ever!
Jessica
These were my favorite peanut butter cookies so far. Everything about them is perfect. Thank you!
Sam
I’m so glad to hear that you enjoyed them, Jessica! Thank you for commenting! <3
Kelly
Made these cookies the other day. This is now the third time I have said this after making your awesome cookie recipes. This is the best cookie I have ever made! The texture is soft and perfect! I have to say rolling them in sugar before baking them is pure genius! It makes these cookies so decadent. After I got a sheet of them rolled in the sugar. I then rolled them again in the sugar since I had so much sugar left over. These are an entire family favorite which never happens. I made each one a level 2 tablespoon from my cookie scoop and it made 50 cookies. Thank you for another great recipe!!
Sam
YES I LOVE hearing this! I’m so glad that you enjoyed the cookies, Kelly! Thank you for coming back to let me know how they turned out!!!
Melissa
Delicious. They seem less peanut buttery to me than the plain peanut butter cookie recipe. Either way I love them both.
Mary Beth
These cookies are amazing and so soft. I almost just want to eat the dough because it’s so fluffy.
Sam
Oh I couldn’t stop myself from eating the dough! I’m glad you liked the cookies, Mary Beth!!! 🙂
Mikaru86
I haven’t made cookies in weeks, so this is perfect XD