These big bakery-style peanut butter chunk cookies are super thick, ultra-soft, and filled with chocolate chips. They have all the peanut butter flavor of your favorite giant bakery cookies, but they’re homemade. They’re hard to resist when served warm from the oven with a cold glass of milk! If you crave oatmeal cookies, try these popular peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
Reader Katelyn says: “This is hands down my favorite cookie recipe of all time. I’ve baked and loved Sally’s recipes for years and this is my new favorite! I ate 3 at a time. 3 separate times. Then brought them to friends who also ate 3 a-piece. Everyone agreed they were the best peanut butter cookies they’ve ever had. Highly recommend!”
While there’s a recipe for classic peanut butter cookies in Sally’s Cookie Addiction cookbook and I have my super soft peanut butter cookies on this website, today’s cookies are EXTRA thick and absolutely loaded with peanut butter and tons of chocolate chips.
These Bakery-Style Peanut Butter Chunk Cookies Are:
- Huge – 3 Tablespoons of dough per cookie
- Crinkly and crackly on top
- Loaded with chopped peanuts and chocolate chips
- Relatively quick– only 1 hour of chill time
- Rolled in sugar for a little sparkle (just like all good peanut butter cookies should!)
- 100% irresistible
Recipe Testing Peanut Butter Chunk Cookies: What Works & What Doesn’t
This is a simple recipe (same base dough as these white chocolate peanut butter cookies), but here are a few easy tricks that help when working with peanut butter cookie dough.
- Chill the cookie dough. You might remember from our How to Prevent Cookies from Spreading page that chilling cookie dough is important. Luckily this cookie dough is pretty thick and stable, which means it doesn’t need hours inside the refrigerator before baking. A quick 1 hour of chilling will prevent the cookies from over-spreading. These brownie cookies (and their jazzed up version — peanut butter filled brownie cookies) have a super quick chill time, too.
- Flatten the dough. Make sure you flatten each cookie with your fingers before baking. This will help the cookies spread a bit in the oven. We do this with traditional peanut butter cookies, too.
Choosing the Right Ingredients
You need the basics like flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Selecting the right ingredients is important, especially when it comes to peanut butter.
- Peanut butter: These cookies have – front and center – highly concentrated peanut butter flavor. To achieve this, use a commercial brand of creamy peanut butter like Jif or Skippy. Though it’s wonderful for eating and cooking, natural-style peanut butter isn’t ideal for these cookies. The cookies will be too crumbly and, depending on the brand, may even have an oily texture. Crunchy peanut butter produces the same crumbly results.
- Room temperature butter: Make sure your butter is cool to the touch and not overly warm. Here’s what room temperature butter really means.
- More white sugar than brown: In these peanut butter chunk cookies, you’ll notice there’s more granulated sugar than brown sugar. When making basic chocolate chip cookies, we usually use more brown sugar than white sugar because it produces a softer cookie. The addition of peanut butter already makes today’s cookies soft and using more brown sugar made them EXTRA soft– to the point where they were falling apart! Too much of a good thing.
- Chocolate chips and peanuts are optional: You can certainly leave them out for plain peanut butter cookies, or you can use just one or the other. But we highly recommend adding both. Just like with peanut butter half moon cookies, the chocolate complements the intense peanut butter flavor and peanuts add a delicious crunch.
More Favorite Cookie Recipes
- Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Monster Cookies
- Sugar Cookies
- Giant Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Iced Oatmeal Cookies
- Peanut Butter Snickerdoodles
Big Bakery-Style Peanut Butter Chunk Cookies
- Prep Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours
- Yield: 24 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These big bakery-style peanut butter chunk cookies are super thick, ultra-soft, and filled with chocolate chips.
Ingredients
- 2 and 1/2 cups (313g) all-purpose flour (spoon & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (230g; 2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup (150g) packed light brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2 cups (500g) creamy peanut butter*
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 and 1/2 cups (270g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
- optional: 1/2 cup (65g) finely chopped peanuts
- optional: 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar for rolling
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and both sugars together on medium speed until smooth, about 1-2 minutes. Add the eggs and beat on high until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Add the peanut butter and vanilla, then mix on high until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until combined. With the mixer running on low speed, add the chocolate chips and peanuts, if using. Dough will be thick and soft.
- Chill the dough for 1 hour in the refrigerator (and up to 2-3 days). If chilling for longer than a few hours, though, allow to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before rolling and baking because the dough will be quite hard and the cookies may not spread that much.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line 2-3 large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. (Always recommended for cookies.) Set aside.
- Roll cookie dough into large balls, about 3 Tablespoons of dough per cookie (about 60g, it’s a lot!), and then roll the balls in granulated sugar. Place 8 balls onto the cookie sheets. Gently press down on each ball to *slightly* flatten. Bake each batch for 14-15 minutes until lightly browned on the sides. The centers will look very soft.
- Remove from the oven. If the cookies are still very puffy, you can gently press down on the warm cookies with the back of a spoon. Let cookies cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week. You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 2-3 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 5. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Here’s how to freeze cookie dough.
- Peanut Butter: It’s best to use a commercial brand peanut butter like Jif creamy or Skippy creamy. I do not suggest using natural style, oily peanut butter. Avoid using crunchy peanut butter; I found it made the cookies super crumbly.
- Check out my top 5 cookie tips before beginning. It includes how to prevent cookies from over-spreading and why room temperature ingredients make a difference.
Keywords: bakery style peanut butter cookies, peanut butter chunk cookies
Would this be ok to package/send to military friend or would they get soft from the peanut butter when wrapped in plastic wrap?
Hi Nancy! These cookies should ship well, here’s our best tips for packaging cookies to mail.
How many grams should each dough ball be before they go in the oven? “About 3 T” is too vague. You’ve got measurements on everything else so why not this? You should add that to the recipe.
Thanks for your feedback, Steffan Paul. We’ve been adding those measurements over the years. 3 Tbsp of dough is roughly 60g.
Choc chip loaf cake
Peanut butter chunk cookies
These 2 receipes are amazing and pretty simple to make and are very delicious and addicting
★★★★★
Sally, just becoming acquainted with your web site
Do you have a newsletter that I can sign up for?
Hi Carol, welcome! We hope you’re enjoying our recipes. Here is where you can sign up for our Baking Made Easy email series, as well as our regular email series that delivers all our new recipes to you inbox. Hope this helps!
These were gobbled down by everyone. The only complaint was not enough chips.
The best peanut butter cookie I have ever made
★★★★★
Hello! I am allergic to peanuts and so I often use Sunflower butter as a substitute when recipes call for peanut butter. Could I do the same for this recipe or would it change the consistency of the dough too much? Thank you Sally!
Hi Rebekah, we haven’t tested it but can’t see why that wouldn’t work! Same amount. Let us know how it goes!
One of my favourite recipes on this site (and in general). They always turn out and are so delicious.
★★★★★
When you refrigerate the cookie dough. Do you roll them first? Or put into log shape? Or just leave in the bowl
Hi Laura, if you leave them in the bowl, we encourage refrigerated dough to warm up for a bit so that it’s easier to roll into balls. Enjoy!
Have you ever baked these as bar cookies? How long should I bake if I decide to try them that way; 25 min at 350?
Hi Ann! We can’t see why not, though we’re unsure of the baking time. Let us know how it goes!
Hi, I baked these delicious cookies but I mistakenly missed your note about not using crunchy peanut butter until after I was done. They didn’t turn out like your picture but still delicious. I will certainly bake these again!
Just like bakery style!
★★★★★
Hi! I’m wondering if I can use this recipe and make them into smaller cookies?
Yes, absolutely!
Hi, Wondering if I can use Corn Starch in place of Baking Powder ?
Hi Pam! No, the two are not interchangeable. Best to stick with baking powder!
I mistakenly used milk chocolate instead of semi sweet chips so I’m sure that was part of the problem but these cookies were way too sweet for us, if I make again I’d cut the white sugar in half. Very soft and good peanut butter taste.
★★★
This is my favourite cookie recipe ever. They’re my ‘special occasion’ cookies – I’m about to start a batch for my anniversary. I could eat the whole batch in a day, but I probably shouldn’t. PB cookies with coffee? Why not!
★★★★★
Sally this comment is in regards to your Soft & Thick Peanut Butter Cookies. Went I try to access that recipe it says…”There has been a critical error on this website.”. Can you please look into it so I can make those cookies again. They are by far my family’s favorite PB cookie. Thanks
Looking into it ASAP! Thanks Patty– we still have the recipe on the backend if you want to email my team and I (sally@sallysbakingaddiction.com)
I baked these cookies, minus the peanuts but with the chocolate chips, before Christmas & put them in the freezer. I gave some to a friend & she told me that they were some of the best cookies she had ever had! I’m getting ready to bake another batch over this weekend for some friends. These will go in the freezer as well, as I don’t need them unti Wed. I did roll them in sugar before freezing them. I’ve used a number of your recipes & they are delicious!
★★★★★
Amazing! We couldn’t stop eating them. Full of peanut butter flavor and a unique texture – a bit snappy on the outside and super soft inside. They melt in your mouth. Don’t skip the granulated sugar on the outside. It adds something special. Yumm.
Hi, I wanted to make these for Christmas, but I need more than 24. So do I just double all the ingredients? Thanks!
Hi Kaniel, Yes! Double all of the ingredients for a double batch of these cookies.
I just made the dough for this and it’s rather fluffy. I followed the directions and used Kraft smooth PB, will it get more solid after it’s chilled in the fridge? Not sure if i should scrape and start over.
Hi Jenn! What do you mean by fluffy? Is it dough quite soft? It will harden as it chills.
Beautiful and delicious! Just made these for the first time (no peanuts added, just ’cause I didn’t have any) and they really are better than bakery peanut butter chocolate chip:-) I did not use a silicon mat or parchment. I rarely use either, but I do understand why pros do. I figure if my great grandma could bake anything in a wood fired oven and it always turned out great, I should be able to do the same with a modern oven – no need for wasteful parchment paper or expensive mats. Cookies came off the sheets just fine – once I let them cool the required 5 minutes! Thanks for always having dependable, great tasting recipes, Sally and crew!
★★★★★
Super good! I did not roll in sugar but they are still delicious. My office is going to love these.
★★★★★
I just baked these cookies tonight for the first time and they were and absolute success! Everyone loved them. Awesome recipe!
★★★★★
Dear Sally, can I use half of all ingredients to make half amount of cookies? Thanks…
Absolutely!
Fantastic cookies. Lovely sparkle. My team loved them.
★★★★★