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 (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
Hi Sally!
I’m excited to try this recipe! Quick question, you mentioned chilled dough must be brought to room temp. before baking but frozen dough you can bake right away. I’m curious to know how come you need to bring chilled dough to room temp.?
Hi Michelle! I encourage refrigerated dough to warm up for a bit so that it’s easier to roll into balls. 🙂 Chilled or frozen balls of dough can be baked! They won’t spread as much so feel free to flatten them out with a spoon prior to or during baking.
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!
★★★★★
Hands down the best peanut butter cookies I ever made! My husband is a police officer and I made the cookies for him and his colleagues – they loved them! Thank you for the great recipe!
★★★★★
I’m from New Zealand and we don’t really cook with peanut butter so I was very specific when looking for a peanut butter cookie recipe. This recipe is absolutely amazing and so glad I tried it! I cooked the recipe twice in one week to make sure it wasn’t a fluke and I’m cooking a batch tomorrow for a road trip… Yum!
★★★★★
Awesome cookie!
Best tasting peanut butter cookie I’ve had in years.
Plan to make again.
★★★★★
Sally. I have been baking for 50 years, and these are the best peanut butter cookies I have ever tasted! They explode with flavor, and the texture is PERFECT. Thank you for sharing this and and all your recipes!
★★★★★
I made these cookies today. They are the best peanut butter cookies I have ever made. I love the big cookies like you get at the bakery. I search for recipes like this all the time and am glad when they turn out so good. I am so glad that one of my friends turned me on to your website. Thanks
I checked these off my baking bucket list this weekend and they are, without a doubt, the best peanut butter cookies I have ever had! My recipe book has a new go-to.
I made your bakery style peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies…except I put the dough in a 9×13 pan and baked them for about 23 minutes! They are a nice thick peanut butter brownie bar!!
Love these cookies!!!! I made a slight change though and it worked awesome. I bought (don’t judge 🙂 a log of peanut butter cookie dough (ready to bake), let it get really cold so it cut well and then rolled small ball of the pb dough and put it in the middle of the large bakery style dough. What I ended up with was a super soft center of peanut butter and the more crunchy outside. It added a nice additional punch of flavor also!!!
Hello! I made the dough last night for my husband’s birthday. I plan to bake them tonight and was curious if I could make the dough balls smaller to yield more than 24 cookies. Thank you!
Hi Sally – I like to think of myself as a good baker but for reasons I can not figure out – I think I messed up the recipe and am so upset over this!
I weighed every ingredient… the only difference was I used a little less peanut butter. As I was weighing up to 500 grams as stated in your recipe, I felt like it was just too much peanut butter and ended up using about 475 grams. I also used two kinds: half from a standard store brand creamy salted peanut butter and half from a Trader Joe’s creamy salted peanut butter. I did include the 1/2 cup of chopped peanuts.
I let the dough sit in the fridge overnight and brought it to room temperate the following day by leaving it on the counter for 1-2 hours. The dough was crumbly but I was still able to roll it into balls. I made the smaller shapes as I had planned to do, rolled them in sugar, and pressed them slightly. They never spread out and after cooling on the rack became hard and very crumbly.
I know you may not be able to help solve this in a comment, but a few friends thought it may be the Trader Joe’s peanut butter. Would it be possible to mix in some extra butter or oil tonight and try baking a few more?
Thank you in advance!
Is the TJs peanut butter the natural variety? I have the best luck using commercial brands like Jif or Skippy.
It didn’t say natural, but next time I will stick with the brands you recommend. Thank you!
Made these today, but didn’t have peanuts… they are delicious. Next time I’m getting peanuts LOL
Absolutely fantastic cookies! I followed the directions to a tee and they came out perfectly, just like Sally’s pictures. I would highly recommend these cookies to any peanut butter lover, or honestly, just really any person. You won’t regret making them! Definitely the best peanut butter cookies I have EVER had!
These cookies are wonderful. They were a big hit at our house. Easy & delicious.
I used chunky peanut butter, chocolate chunks & rolled top half of dough in raw sugar. Yum!
My family is full of peanut butter cookie conissuers and they all said these peanut butter cookies were HANDS DOWN the best they ever had. My brother and his girlfriend even put away the dessert they bought from Wegmans so that they could have more room for the cookies lol. I’ll be lucky if the batch I made survives til tomorrow morning. You know a recipe is a keeper when everyone is saying “mmmm” before they even swallow their first bite
If you were to make the cookies themselves smaller (maybe only 1 tablespoons each opposed to the 3 tablespoons the recipe calls for), does that affect the cooking time/temp?
Yep– reduce down a couple minutes.
Made these last night and they turned out GREAT. Quick question though: if I reduce the granulated sugar quantity from 1c to 1/2c, would it affect the overall texture/cooking time/etc.? Thank you! 🙂
The texture, yes– the cooking time– no. Glad you enjoyed them!
Hi Sally! These look amazing!! Do you think I can switch regular chocolate chips for white chocolate?
Absolutely! Same amount.
Sally, I have bad news. You did not name these cookies properly. Around here they are knows as PEANUT BUTTER SUGAR BOMBS because that’s EXACTLY what they are. I’ve never EVER tasted more peanut butter in my life. The dusting of sugar is PURE BLISS. The beautiful cracks were heaven to behold! MY HOUSE SMELLED LIKE SIN ITSELF!
Thank you, thank you, THANNNNNNK YOUUUUU for this recipe! It is a keeper and a beloved favorite. I adore it; I adore YOU. :o)
Woke up this morning. Saw this recipe. Printed. Second batch is baking now! Perfection! Can’t wait to serve them Christmas Eve. Thank you for making me look so good!
Best peanut butter cookie I have ever used. These are awesome and were so easy to make. Thank you!
Made these the other day and needless to say they are all gone. So good! My daughter suggested I make them with white chocolate chips next time. I wonder if they’d be as good as the original?
I’d say so! I love white chocolate and peanut butter.
Just made these! Think I have a new favorite. I skipped rolling the balls in sugar. Big delicious cookie!
I just made these cookies. The peanut butter smell when they were cooking was so intense, I felt like I was in peanut butter heaven. The cookies have the most wonderful peanut better flavor. Great recipe!
Hi Sally,
Any recommendations if I were to convert this into a cake sized cookie? Thinking of it as a birthday option!
Thanks so much!
Yum! I’d only say to bake in a deep-dish cake pan or springform pan. Unsure of the exact bake time though.
Sally, these cookies were delicious! These are the first peanut butter cookies I have ever made and they were a hit! Love your recipes and can’t thank you enough for sharing them with all of us.
I made these 2 weeks ago. Two of our son’s work the same shift as my husband so I sent some with him to give to them. The next morning the first text I received was, “These cookies are INSANE!”, the next text, from the 22 y/o, who just recently moved out, “Those cookies are —-ing awesome!”(what is it when they move out that suddenly they want to swear in front of you?). Our oldest son and his wife left on Thursday for an anniversary trip and were dropping of grandkids/grandog and I had frozen some cookies. I packed up a bag for them to take on the road. The first thing out of #1 son’s mouth, “Are these the cookies I’ve been hearing about?” I guess brothers do talk. I mixed up a double batch, threw them in 2 ziploc bags in the fridge and baked them on Sunday. perfection. Yesterday I made your Creamy Chicken Pasta Salad for a housewarming party we’re going to today. Delicious!
WOW! These are, by far, the best peanut butter cookies. We doubled the recipe and made half plain and half with the chocolate chips and Reece’s pieces. So amazing!
Just made these for my grandson’s birthday party… What a hit! Absolutely Delicious!
Sally, made these cookies and they are fantastic! (as are all the recipes I have tried from your blog so far). I had some left over M&M’s (can you have those? and added these. Works very well with the PB.
Oh my gosh these are probably so good with M&Ms!
Sally, I have followed you since the beginning and own (and use religiously) both cookbooks. I just wanted to take a minute and say thank you. I love to try out new recipes and your blog is full of easy and fantastic ones.
My 2 teenage boys LOVED these cookies. they have been dubbed “Big A**” peanut butter cookies in our house. they both snuck one as they were cooling, and literally stopped in their tracks and moaned when they bit into them!!!!
It’s a joy to see someone succeed with their passion, and to share that passion with others. Keep up the great work, I look forward to trying future recipes.
YES and YES!! These are the softest peanut butter cookies and stay soft for days. I know you’ll love them.