Using this recipe, you’ll enjoy ultra-soft and thick bakery-style peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that are filled to the brim with chocolate chips. I make them with a whopping 2 cups of peanut butter, so you’re guaranteed mega flavor in every single bite.
One 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 apiece. Everyone agreed they were the best peanut butter cookies they’ve ever had. Highly recommend! ★★★★★”
You don’t have to go another day without experiencing what some bakers have called “one of my favorite recipes on this site (and in general)” and “the best cookies I’ve ever made.”
While there’s a recipe for classic peanut butter cookies in my 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 chocolate chips. I published the recipe back in 2016, and figured I’d bring it back into the spotlight. This IS peanut butter perfection, after all.
These Bakery-Style Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies Are:
- Huge—3 Tablespoons of dough per cookie
- Soft for days
- Crinkly & crackly on top
- Loaded with chocolate chips
- Thick & 100% irresistible
- Relatively quick—only 1 hour of chill time
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies: What Works & What Doesn’t
This is a simple recipe, and the same base dough as my white chocolate peanut butter cookies. When developing the recipe several years ago, I learned a couple tricks and am happy to share my findings:
- Embrace a creamy cookie dough. 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of peanut butter, and 2 eggs make for an extremely creamy cookie dough. Embrace it; you do not want to add more flour. When the dough hits the oven, peanut butter acts somewhat like a dry ingredient and gives the cookies structure.
- Chill the cookie dough. You might remember from my How to Prevent Cookies from Spreading page that chilling cookie dough is important. Luckily this dough is thick and stable, which means it doesn’t need hours in the refrigerator before baking. A quick 1 hour of chilling prevents the cookies from over-spreading. My brownie cookies (and the jazzed-up version—peanut butter-filled brownie cookies) have a super-quick chill time, too.
- Flatten the dough. Make sure you slightly flatten each cookie before baking, as this will help the cookies spread a bit in the oven. If you think about it, it’s a common step when making peanut butter cookies—you flatten those with a fork prior to baking. Here, you can just use the back of a spoon or your hands.
Grab These Ingredients:
Selecting the right ingredients is important, especially when it comes to peanut butter. This recipe calls for more peanut butter than any other recipe that makes an equivalent amount of dough. So without question, you’re guaranteed an intensely flavored cookie.
- Peanut butter: As mentioned, 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 here. 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. If you want to use natural-style peanut butter in a cookie recipe, try these flourless peanut butter oatmeal cookies instead.
- Room-temperature butter: Make sure your butter is cool to the touch. Here’s what room-temperature butter really means.
- More white sugar than brown: In these peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, you’ll notice there’s more granulated sugar than brown sugar. When making basic chocolate chip cookies, I recommend using 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. As a result, I learned it was simply too much of a good thing.
- Chocolate chips: Just like with peanut butter half moon cookies, the chocolate complements the intense peanut butter. I recommend semi-sweet chocolate chips because they add a balanced flavor, and just the right amount of sweetness.
One reader, Paige, says: “What is this magic? I was a little hesitant this whole process…. two cups of peanut butter? Three-tablespoon-sized cookies? No way! But this works and the cookies are incredible. ★★★★★“
You can even replace some of the chocolate chips with peanuts, which makes for a wonderfully chunky cookie with extra peanut flavor. You can also roll the balls of dough in granulated sugar (before slightly flattening them) for some sparkle, just like these peanut butter blossoms.
I also have a recipe for unapologetically big and fat peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that boast the same great flavor, and have the added chew from oats.
Use a commercial brand of processed creamy peanut butter like Jif or Skippy. Though it’s wonderful for eating and cooking, natural-style peanut butter won’t do this dough any favors. The cookies will be too crumbly and, depending on the brand, may even have an oily texture.
I don’t recommend crunchy peanut butter in these cookies because, like natural-style, it produces a crumbly cookie. Feel free to swap some chocolate chips for peanuts to achieve that crunchy peanut butter texture.
You may have over-baked them. Bake just until the edges are set; the centers will still look quite soft. Give them at least 10 minutes to cool on the baking sheets before transferring to a cooling rack.
More Favorite Cookie Recipes
- Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Monster Cookies
- Sugar Cookies
- Giant Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Iced Oatmeal Cookies
- Peanut Butter Snickerdoodles
Bakery-Style Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours
- Yield: 32 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These big bakery-style peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are super thick, ultra-soft, and filled with chocolate chips. It’s best to use creamy peanut butter, and be sure to chill the cookie dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour before baking.
Ingredients
- 2 and 1/2 cups (313g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) 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*
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups (360g) semi-sweet chocolate chips*
- 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 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 beat 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. Dough will be thick and soft.
- Cover and chill the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour and up to 3 days. If chilling for longer than a few hours, though, allow the dough to sit out 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 large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. (Always recommended for cookies.) Set aside.
- Scoop cookie dough into large balls, about 3 Tablespoons of dough per cookie (about 60g, it’s a lot!), and, if desired, roll the balls in granulated sugar. Coating in sugar is optional. Place 8 balls onto the cookie sheets. Gently press down on each ball to *slightly* flatten.
- Bake each batch for 14–15 minutes, or until the edges appear set and lightly browned on the sides. The centers will still look very soft.
- Cool cookies for 10 minutes on the baking sheet. During this time, I like to press a few more chocolate chips into the tops of the warm cookies. (This is optional and only for looks.) Transfer to wire rack to cool completely. The cookies will slightly deflate as they cool.
- Cover leftover cookies tightly and store at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 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.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowl | Whisk | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Cooling Rack
- Can I Halve this Recipe? Yes, absolutely. Halve the recipe by halving all of the ingredients. The instructions remain the same.
- Peanut Butter: It’s best to use a commercial, processed brand of peanut butter like Jif creamy or Skippy creamy. I do not suggest using natural-style, oily peanut butter. Avoid using crunchy peanut butter because it makes the cookies extra crumbly.
- Chocolate Chips: You can replace 1/2 cup (about 90g) of the chocolate chips with chopped peanuts for extra peanut flavor.
- 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.
Pretty tasty!! Even making them the recommended size, it made a lot of friggin cookies! Very peanut buttery, very chocolately. I measured everything with a scale, used Jif creamy peanut butter and experimented with baking times, and they definitely came out like I’d expect a peanut butter cookie to, maybe a hair on the crumbly side, definitely not what I’d describe as gooey though, even the ones I under baked (I can be… very picky with my cookie recipes and consider the best chocolate chip to be Betty Crockers recipe 🙂 Instead of just palming them a lil flatter, which I did do with some of them, most I did the traditional peanut butter fork sugar imprint criss cross. Didn’t seem to make a difference texture wise, so I figured why not 🙂 my only variance was that I used homemade vanilla bean paste, instead of extract (and may have added a bit more than it called for 🙂 overall I’m happy with them. They are pretty substantial cookies, i was going to do some a smaller size but I also was getting tired and just wanted to be done haha (was a chore intensive day 🙂 probably should have used that as my cue to freeze some dough but oh well, next time! 🙂 and lemme tell ya.. there will definitely be a next time!
I’m an experienced baker-I made these cookies exactly as written, for a family member who was craving peanut butter (and a little chocolate), and these were the Best ever! I myself, have never cared much for peanut butter, but with these cookies, I definitely helped eat my share-As with all your other delicious recipes I have made these are just soooo good as well- not dry, slightly flaky but moist, bursting with rich flavor-An absolute keeper for sure- Thank you so much Sally!
Scrumptious & heartily satisfying treat. My tweaks were to melt the butter and add in 1/2 cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts then froze the dough balls overnight. After baking 20 minutes I did the old fork criss-cross to press them down to make them spread a bit & baked a few more minutes.
While they looked pretty I found them to be super grainy … did anyone else have this extremely dry? They were baked to
Perfection when I took them out of the oven and was just not the texture I expected
Hi Sam, peanut butter can be a drying ingredient in baked goods, so it’s important to measure all the ingredients really carefully. How are you measuring your flour? Be sure to weigh it with a kitchen scale or else spoon and level your flour, so you don’t end up adding more than you need. And the other culprit for dry/grainy cookies here could be the type of peanut butter you used. We recommend processed peanut butter, not natural, for the best texture in these cookies. If you’re interested, these cookie baking tips will also be helpful should you decide to try any of our cookie recipes again. Thank you so much for giving these a go!
Where the heck are the peanut butter lovers cookies (with cut up Reese’s cups?). My aunt loved them and I cannot find this recipe anywhere on your site anymore. Where is it and can you please send it to me whoever has it? Thank you!
Hi Jasmine, feel free to send us an email at sally@sallysbakingaddiction.com and we’d be happy to share a copy of that older recipe with you. Thank you!
Has anyone subbed GF flour for this recipe?
Hi Jainnie, we haven’t tested a gluten free version of this recipe, but let us know if you do!
I subbed GF flour for this recipe and it worked out perfectly! I used the measure for measure GF King Arthur flour. The cookies were a huge hit over the holidays.
My coworkers went crazy for this recipe. THANK YOU
These are delicious cookies. I will never make plain peanut butter cookies again. This is a keeper
I used natural peanut butter – Costco brand, they are a tad crumbly but they held together once cooled and taste awesome.
This recipe was as good as buying cookies from a bakery The only changes I made were I used half peanut butter chips, and used dark brown sugar, because that is what I had. The cookies were so soft and peanut buttery! This recipe is definitely a keeper! Thank you for sharing!!!
On my 5th batch so ya, kinda yummy!! The first batch I had to use 60/40 creamy/chunky PB. Next one went exactly as written. Honestly, I think subbing in some chunky made them even better. Almost a butter cookie texture. Either way, these will be my only choc chip/PB recipe EVER!!
Meant to add, I’m doing smaller cookies, 2 tbl size-ish, 12 min
I’ve made these several times & everyone loves them! I’m getting ready to make & freeze for Christmas question though! Can I put them in the fridge in metal bowl that comes with a stand mixr Should I transfer the dough to a glass bowl? I tried to buy a glass bowl to go with my stand mixer but
they were out of stock!
Hi Linda, that bowl should be fine!
Can’t wait to try this recipe! Can you make the cookies smaller to yield more? Want to take them to a cookie exchange. Love you and your recipes, Sally!
Hi Hazel, You can make the cookies smaller, bake time will be just a bit shorter, but not much. Keep a close eye on them.
These are absolutely the BEST peanut butter chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made/tasted. Thank you for sharing this recipe.
I am a laughable baker – really. My family laughs at me when I bake and generally the results are passable in a sugar emergency only. These were the best cookie anyone has had. I was SO CAREFUL and it paid off. Love them! I did use an ice cream scoop to measure…too much? Not if you askl me…OR my family. My incoherently amazed and thankful family.
I made this recipe with organic whole wheat flour rather than all purpose flour. Although they were not chewy and soft, they still had a good flavor. The consistency was a bit more crumbly but they will definitely get eaten. For my family, the healthier option is worth it.
Sally, can I add cut-up dried cherries to this recipe
Hi Carla, I can’t see why not!
I made these for my son’s birthday, he loved them! They came out perfectly! I measured everything and followed to a T. Perfection! Thanks, Sally, for making my son smile!
Another Sally’s recipe that turned out perfect with rave reviews from everyone who tasted them. Recipes are detailed and easy to follow. No need to adjust anything. No Sally’s recipe has ever gone wrong for me.
This is the best peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe we’ve ever had! It’s so delicious that I can only make half a batch each time or I end up eating way too many!
I made these cookies but used half the peanut butter and added Reese’s peanut butter chips. They came out amazing! I did use 3 tablespoons of dough for each cookie. I am making the recipe again, the same way, but I would like the cookies slightly smaller. If I use 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie, how will they come out? Will I need to adjust the cooking time?
Hi Loren, we’re so glad you enjoyed the cookies! You can make the cookies smaller, bake time will be just a bit shorter, but not much. Keep a close eye on them.
Hi Sally! I have successfully made several batches of your delicious cookies and yesterday made more of the dough, followed your instructions and ingredient measurements exactly. After chilling the dough, I attempted to make the first cookie by rolling a ball and after placing on the parchment paper covered baking pan, flatten it out a little. The problem is the dough is not holding itself together very well, it resists being pressed together, and when flattening it out with my palm it just about falls apart.
Can something be added and mixed into the dough to correct this condition?
Butter perhaps? And suggestions you could make will be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks! Stay safe and well!
Sincerely yours,
John Mychaluk
Gladstone, MO
Sent from my iPhone
Hi John, we’re happy to help troubleshoot. How did you measure your flour? Be sure to spoon and level (or use a kitchen scale) to ensure the flour isn’t over measured; that’s usually the culprit when cookie dough is dry and crumbly. Otherwise, did you change brands of ingredients in this batch of cookies by chance? Perhaps use a different brand of peanut butter? We wouldn’t add any more butter at this point, but you could try rolling the balls of dough more in your hands, and the warmth from your hands should help bring the dough together. Be sure to pop them rolled cookie dough balls back in the refrigerator before baking them, though, if they get too warm. Hope this helps!
I tried to make these cookies for my Grandson. I admit I am not a baker, but I followed the recipe very carefully. They turned out horribly! Rock hard and unsuitable for anyone to eat except maybe a Pig! Bottom line is, this recipe is only good for an experienced baker, not for an amateur!
Hi Marley, we’re so sorry to hear these cookies didn’t turn out as expected. They’re quite soft with all that peanut butter, but if yours came out hard it’s likely one of two culprits. Were they over baked by chance? That can dry out cookies and make them hard, especially as they continue to cool out of the oven. And how did you measure your flour? Be sure to spoon and level or use a kitchen scale to ensure the flour isn’t over measured. If there is too much flour in your dough, that will also dry out/harden the cookies. If you’re interested, these cookie baking tips will also be helpful should you decide to try any of our cookie recipes again. Thank you so much for giving these a go!
These are the best cookies I’ve ever made- and I’ve made A LOT! Your tip about pressing in a few extra chocolate chips after they come out of the oven is a total game changer. It sounded so silly at first I wasn’t going to do it- but thankfully I came to my senses and took your advice. It completely levels them up to professional looking- SO impressed!
Best peanut butter/chocolate chip recipe ever! Did not chill the dough. I used a 2 TBSP cookie scoop and baked for 10 minutes, leaving them on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes after baking. Sooo good!
i made these for my daughter and husband as i have diabetes. i put in 2 cups of chocolate chips and a half a cup of peanuts because i like to put nuts in cookies. i only had chunky peanut butter so i had to use that and i reduced the cooking time a bit because my oven is unpredictable. they loved them, but i will use creamy peanut butter next time as they were a bit crumbly as you said they would be. thank you 🙂
Can I make this into a skillet cookie?
Hi GayLynn, we have a recipe for a Peanut Butter Skillet Cookie here!
This is a great recipe. On the last batch of cookies I made, I used half chocolate chips and half peanut butter chips instead, and the boys loved them! I also rolled them in sugar this time. Wow, what a cookie that made!
My cookies keep coming out really puffy. They don’t spread at all. I let them thew for almost two hours. I had them in the fridge.
Hi Jade, it sounds like your flour may have been over measured a bit. Be sure to spoon and level (or use a kitchen scale) to ensure just the right amount of flour is added to the batter. If you find your cookies aren’t spreading, see tip #2 “What if cookies AREN’T spreading?” in our 5 Cookie Baking Tips post.
These pb chocolate chip cookies are AMAZING!!!! They are the best pb dough I’ve tasted and I’m not a huge pb fan. I love the size of these. I did bake them longer than the recipe said but it yielded a crunchier cookie, it really is fine at the 15 minute mark even though they look undone.
When you freeze them, you say you don’t have to thaw them before baking, but do you have to slightly flatten them before freezing or do you omit the flattening direction all together?
We’re so glad you love these! You can bake them from frozen cookie dough balls.
Yesterday, I made this recipe for the first time & it’s amazing! Served to dinner guests & it was a hit!! Followed the directions with no changes. Rolling them in sugar as suggested added to the yumminess. The appearance, texture & easiness of making was great. Will definitely make em regularly