The Best Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the best peanut butter to use for cookies? ›

Peanut butter: Creamy peanut butter is ideal for this recipe because crunchy peanut butter creates an overly crumbly cookie. You can use processed peanut butter such as Jif or Skippy, or natural-style peanut butter.

Butter will make your cookies taste buttery; shortening will make them taste suspiciously vacant, like Katy Perry's voice post-autotune. Yes, shortening yields chewier cookies than butter does, because butter contains water and shortening doesn't.

Prep your Peanut Butter Cookie recipe up to 24 hours in advance, cover it and refrigerate it so you are ready to bake at a moment's notice. The kids can even help you scoop, roll and flatten the cookies. If the dough is too firm to scoop, let it stand at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

The wrong type of peanut butter may cause them to fall apart. Or using old eggs may create crumbly cookies. How long do peanut butter cookies last?

Best for Baking

Reese's is one of our Test Kitchen's favorite candies, and it's also one of our preferred peanut butters. Spooning this out of the jar, you'll find that Reese's peanut butter is super thick and creamy. This texture, according to Catherine, makes this brand ideal for baking.

Basic reason..the dough is more dense than most cookie doughs, and the pressing with the fork tines helps the dough bake evenly. Secondarily, its pattern makes it easier to tell them apart from other cookies with similar appearance.

If you don't flatten the cookies first, then the fork does double duty – it performs both functions. One very subtle result of creating the pattern is that the little tips of dough bake up crisper than the rest of the cookie, giving you both a bit of additional texture and deeper taste where the dough is more baked.

Crisco® all-vegetable shortening will make your cakes moist, pie crusts flaky, and cookies soft and fluffy, with 0g of trans fat per serving*. One look, and you'll see why we've got butter beat.

The most important part of today's recipe? Chill your cookie dough! The dough is extremely soft due to the creamy peanut butter, eggs, and butter and if it's not cold going into the oven, the cookies will spread all over your baking sheet.

We prefer natural peanut butter here, so you can dial in the sugar and salt amounts precisely, and smooth peanut butter over crunchy to better control the cookies' fat and moisture levels. Letting the cookie dough rest ensures the flour is fully hydrated, resulting in crisper edges and chewier middles.

What happens if you don t refrigerate cookie dough before baking? ›

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.

Ones with lots of additives do not have as distinct a peanutty taste. So, use a natural peanut butter. Two, your expectations for a peanut taste are too high. The cookies have lots of other ingredients including a significant amount of flavor that decrease the flavor of the peanut butter.

Why are my peanut butter cookies hard? If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

Use a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Coating your baking sheet with nonstick spray or butter creates an overly greasy foundation, causing the cookies to spread. I always recommend a silicone baking mat because they grip onto the bottom of your cookie dough, preventing the cookies from spreading too much.

As long as you are choosing a peanut butter that's all natural and pesticide free, in addition to being free from added salt or sugar, any peanut butter will be a healthy choice. However, crunchy peanut butter has a little more fiber and less saturated fat, making it overall more nutritious, even if only slightly so.

One reason could be that you overcooked them. Another reason could be that you didn't add enough moisture to the dough. Finally, your peanut butter cookies might be dry and crumbly if you used a natural peanut butter that doesn't have any added oil.

Several uncited studies report most people prefer smooth peanut butter to chunky peanut butter. The National Peanut Board says people living on the East Coast prefer creamy peanut butter, while those on the West Coast prefer the crunchy style.

Most Americans use smooth peanut butter in PB&Js. I prefer the extra crunchy stuff -— it provides a lovely layer of texture against the soft white bread and gloopy jam. Whether you opt for smooth or crunchy is a matter of personal taste.