Peanut butter and chocolate lovers rejoice! I’ve combined at least 3 delicious cookies into 1 mouthwatering recipe with my big fat peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Consider yourself warned: these cookies are exploding with flavor, unapologetically thick, and hopelessly irresistible. They’re guaranteed to satisfy almost every cookie craving.
One reader, Dyna, says: “Hands down the BEST cookie recipe I have ever made, and I’ve made a lot of cookies in my time as a 50-something, mother of three. An incredibly satisfying cookie experience. All the extra notes and suggestions too were spot on. Following those tips made for a beautiful, delectable cookie! Thank you for putting this out there into the world for all to enjoy.”
A cookie to end all cookies, these big fat peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are a mouthful. I was inspired to try these decadent treats after seeing the cover of my cookbook, Sally’s Cookie Addiction, for the first time. The glorious monster cookies gracing the book cover are loaded with M&Ms and can be found in Chapter 2.
This recipe, however, skips those rainbow candies and focuses instead on a flavor relationship like no other. Chocolate chips and peanut butter. It’s a match made in cookie heaven! In this recipe, we’re combining that perfect pairing with textured oats to achieve the thickest, richest, and most satisfying cookie.
Video Tutorial
Tell Me About these Big Fat Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Texture: Loaded with so many delicious add-ins, these cookies have chewy edges, soft centers, and are unbelievably thick. (I’m always shocked by how thick they turn out.)
- Flavor: Ordinary chocolate chip cookies are buttery sweet on their own, but the peanut butter-chocolate pairing here brings a delicious decadence to these cookies. If this flavor pairing is a favorite, be sure to add these peanut butter chocolate cookies to your list, too.
- Ease: Simple to make, the dough comes together in just minutes using a few staple pantry add-ins like old-fashioned oats and peanut butter. Make them for same-day snacking or prepare them ahead of a special occasion (see Note).
- Time: This dough can be prepped and chilled in under an hour. 20 minutes in the refrigerator (the same amount of time we chill dough for brownie cookies) helps the oats soak up some moisture and prevents the cookie from overspreading.
If you love these cookies but don’t have oats, try these peanut butter chocolate chip cookies instead. If you love these cookies but need a gluten free dessert recipe, try these flourless peanut butter oatmeal cookies or flourless monster cookies instead. We’ve got all the bases covered!
Recipe Testing: What Works & What Doesn’t
- The weight of peanut butter. This cookie dough is adapted from my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The addition of peanut butter here, however, can weigh down the dough. To counter this, I add baking powder for lift.
- A spreading solution. When testing the recipe, I found the cookies weren’t spreading enough. I decided to swap the quantities of granulated sugar and brown sugar. Granulated sugar—dry and thin—helps increase cookie spread. Brown sugar—moist and thick—keeps cookies compact. Increasing the granulated sugar makes all the difference in this dough for the perfect spread. You won’t even miss that extra brown sugar flavor because the peanut butter is our front-runner.
- Fewer oats + more chocolate. When testing, I originally had a higher quantity of oats in the cookies. I decided to reduce that amount to make room for more chocolate chips. Can you blame me?
Choosing the Right Ingredients: Best Peanut Butter to Use
Peanut butter. Though natural-style peanut butter is my #1 choice for eating and snacking, I recommend using non-natural peanut butter for this particular cookie recipe. Natural peanut butter can be used in my regular peanut butter cookies (though the cookies are a little crumblier than intended), but it’s not ideal for today’s recipe. Instead, use Jif or Skippy. You can use creamy or crunchy, but I prefer creamy peanut butter as crunchy can make the cookies taste a little dry. You need 1 cup of peanut butter for this recipe.
Room-temperature butter. Like my basic soft chocolate chip cookies, the base of today’s oatmeal cookie recipe is creamed room-temperature butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar. You can’t cream butter and sugar together if the butter is too warm or too cold. (It usually spells disaster for your cookies!) Room temperature butter is about 65°F (18°C). It’s cool and slightly firm to touch, not warm or slippery. I recommend placing your butter on the counter for 1 hour prior to beginning the recipe to achieve ideal “room temperature” butter. If you don’t have an hour, here is my trick to soften butter quickly. You need 1 cup of butter for this cookie dough.
Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
After you prepare the peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies dough, chill it for 20 minutes in the refrigerator. After chilling, it’s time to scoop the dough and bake the cookies. Each cookie uses 2 Tablespoons of dough which is about the same size as these regular chocolate chip cookies. Arrange the cookie dough balls 3 inches apart on your baking sheet. These cookies are large, so I use a medium cookie scoop and overflow it with dough (since the medium only holds 1.5 Tablespoons.)
More Quick Cookie Recipes
- Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwiches
- Mini M&M Cookies
- Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Giant Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Brownie Cookies
- Shortbread Cookies
Big Fat Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 40 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
- Yield: 32 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
Big fat peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are easy, thick, and exploding with peanut butter, oats, and chocolate chips to satisfy your cookie cravings.
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/2 cups (188g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 cup (260g) creamy peanut butter
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups (170g) old-fashioned whole rolled oats
- 2 and 1/2 cups (450g) semi-sweet chocolate chips, plus more for topping if desired
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- In a large bowl using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium-high speed until smooth, about 1 minute. Add the granulated sugar and brown sugar and beat on medium-high speed until creamed, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, peanut butter, and vanilla and beat on high speed until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl and beat again as needed to combine.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until combined. With the mixer running on low speed, add the oats. Once combined, beat in the chocolate chips. Dough will be thick and sticky. Cover and chill the dough for at least 20 minutes in the refrigerator (and up to 4 days). If chilling for longer than 1 hour, allow to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before rolling and baking because the dough will be quite hard.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Scoop balls of dough, 2 Tablespoons of dough per cookie, and arrange 3 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 12-14 minutes until lightly browned on the sides. The centers will look very soft.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. While the cookies are still warm, I like to press a few more chocolate chips into the tops—this is only for looks!
- Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 4. 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. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowl | Whisk | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mat or Parchment Paper | Medium Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rack
- Peanut Butter: Use a non-natural peanut butter like Jif creamy or Skippy creamy. I do not suggest using natural style or oily peanut butter as both produce crumbly, fragile, and sandy tasting cookies. (Try this recipe for flourless peanut butter oatmeal cookies if you want to use natural!) Crunchy peanut butter is OK, but I find the cookies taste a little dry with it.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
These are soooooooo good! I’ve made lots of different cookie recipes and this is one of the yummiest! I added walnuts but everything else was exact to recipe!
Delicious and perfect! The cookies turned out very light and soft but at the same time very rich in flavor. I love the texture that the oats add.
Omg. These are so good. Didn’t have an egg, so swapped for 1/4 c plain Greek yogurt. They were excellent!!!
I was looking for a recipe for peanut butter oatmeal cookie bars. If I make these in a 9×13 pan, how long do I have to bake them?
Hi Elwood, you can definitely try these in a 9×13 inch pan to make cookie bars. We’re unsure of the exact bake time needed, but you can follow the baking time and temperature for our Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars as a guide. Enjoy!
These cookies are DELICIOUS! We made 9 and saved the dough for another day. My dad LOVED the outer crunchiness. Super easy and good. Thanks Sally!
Incredible! My family really enjoyed these and the recipe was simple and breezy to complete while jamming out in the kitchen!
Thanks for the much needed R&R recipe!
Thank you Sally. These are the best chocolate chip peanut butter cookies I have ever tried. And Oatmeal. And everyone agrees. I have passed this recipe to more then a dozen friends. We all love them!!,
Yummy!! So good!! Made them for the first time a few weeks ago to take to work and they dissapeared quickly!! I will definitely be making these again – often!!
These are amazing! Followed the recipe as written, except my bag of dark chocolate
chunks didn’t have quite as many as listed – but it was still plenty of chocolate. Baked for 12 minutes, let sit for 5 on the pan. I just recently got a stand mixer and am having a lot of fun with it, so I creamed the hell out of the butter / sugars and then again with all the wet ingredients before adding the dry. I was a little afraid they’d be underdone, but took the advice of a friend who once said “there’s no such thing as an underbaked chocolate chip cookie.” Will definitely make again.
Omg. Never going back to my plain chocolate chip cookies! Sooooo good!!
Good flavor for sure but dry. I added 4/5 of a banana per half of the recipe and it made the texture perfect!
I have yet to try these but was wondering if I should add something to the recipe since all I have is natural PB? Eager to make these tonight & sensitive to many PB with fillers.
Hi Sam! See the recipe note about natural peanut butter – we link to another recipe you can try instead!
I would deffently recommend these, and cook them for only 12 minutes even if they seem un-cooked, they will get harder over time when they are resting. These cookies were so soft and delicious next time I would add a bit less sugar.
These were delicious. Make them. I added 1/4 tsp nutmeg because I’m wild.
Have done these 3 times now. Need I say more . . .
Would like to try and swap out the peanut butter forsomething else, and add an orange flavour. Any ideas ?
Hi Neil! Swapping out the peanut butter would take some recipe testing, let us know if you try anything! You may love these Dark Chocolate Orange Slice & Bake Cookies.
Tried Nutella instead of peanut butter, with added orange zest and extract, but didn’t work that well. Too gooey.
The suggestion that you made looks good. Thanks.
These cookies are absolutely DE-LISH! I followed the recipe “almost” exactly…I reduced the white sugar to 1/2 cup and swapped out 1/2 cup of chocolate chips for 1/2 cup walnuts (my feeble attempt at making the cookies a little more healthy ). Now for a silly question…has anyone done a calorie count per cookie based on the posted recipe?
These are amazing! They are my new favorite cookie. Thank you so much!!!!
Delicious cookies. Used a large Oxo cookie scoop and baked for 17 minutes on a silicone mat. This is a new family fave. Thanks!
While the flavor is great, I’m having issues with this recipe. I baked some fresh (after that 20 some minute chill) and some from frozen (adding that extra minute or so to the bake time), and both times I had the same issue. It’s almost like the cookie melts around the edges and bakes out thinner and then there’s a huge lump in the center that never spreads. As they cool they even out ever so slightly, but not much. Mine never spread/get puffy like yours do in your photos. I just don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I followed the recipe with only the single change of using chunky JIF instead of creamy (creamy peanut butter just doesn’t exist in my house, I use chunky for literally everything.) I’ve made many of your cookie recipes and have never had this happen this bad. I’m glad they still taste good, of course, but they just don’t have the texture I was hoping for at all. 🙁
Hi Krystal! I’m glad you enjoy the flavor of these peanut butter oatmeal cookies. Chunky peanut butter (especially Jif) is thicker than creamy, so I’m assuming that the cookies are just not spreading as much due to that switch. It’s nothing you can’t fix though– before baking, I recommend gently flattening the cookie dough balls with the back of a spoon. This will help initiate the spread so the centers can flatten out and bake a little more evenly. I hope this helps.
I’ve used my chunky peanut butter in so many recipes, yours and others, and have never had a problem. I have no idea why it decided to act up this time, maybe it’s an older container of peanut butter. Regardless, I had frozen the dough balls already so I went ahead and took out a few while the oven preheated, so they could thaw ever so slightly and I could squish those suckers down a bit. I baked them longer than the recipe called for as mine were never getting all that browned on the edges like I wanted, probably my oven temp or something. And by god, it worked perfectly! They look amazing, almost exactly like your pictures. I’m so happy and can’t wait for them to cool a bit so I can devour them lol. Thank you so much! I really appreciate how responsive you can be with questions. 🙂
THE BEST. I added walnuts. I make a lot of cookies and this recipe will not be one of frequent ones.
hi all!
i made these with quick oats (that is all i had on hand) and they came out a bit thinner but still very chewy!
it’s definitely a hit with the whole family!
This is our new favorite cookie!
I make these as written except that I chop up Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups instead of using chocolate chips. Everyone loves them. Thank you so much for your detailed recipes.
Delicious! My family and I loved these cookies! Perfect ratio of oatmeal to peanut butter to chocolate chips!!!
I really like this recipe. I have tried several variations. Today I am adding chopped walnuts and cut up dried cherries, that my daughter left here at Christmas.
Thanks for the helpful website!
Glad to have an on-line “community” of cooks. It has really helped me get through some tough times.
Cheers!
Hi Sally,
I follow you on Sally’s Baking Addiction! I love your recipes!
my question about these cookies, as well as many cookie recipes is.
When I bake them on silicone mats they always overspread when baking, no matter how much I pre-chill the dough. I bake them and remove them from the pan as soon as they set up, 5 minutes. This doesn’t seem to happen to me when I use parchment paper. Have you experienced this issue with this cookie recipe or any of your cookie recipes?
Thank you so much and Happy New Year!
Hi Chef Tom, That’s interesting that they only spread on your silicone mats – usually the mats help the dough “grip” the cookie dough better. They can get pretty oily after a time so I wonder if your mats could use a good cleaning. You may find the post How to Clean Your Silicone Baking Mats helpful. Also, for more troubleshooting tips on cookies that spread, check out this post on 10 Guaranteed Tips to Prevent Cookies from Spreading.
Delicious! And I’ve tried a few oatmeal PB cookie recipes that came out a little, well, sandy. I use natural PB and these were soooooo good! Best I’ve made so far. They also have substance, like a chocolate chip cookie consistency but PB flavored. I did use quick oats and replaced 1 cup of it with flour because I ran out of oats but it was still amazing:)
Hi Rachel. I was planning to use natural peanut butter too but got worried since the recipe said not to. But you mentioned it turned out fine. It wasn’t sandy or crumbly? Thanks
made these with natural almond butter and they turned out amazing!! new favorite cookie 🙂
These cookies are amazing, they are the perfect mix of sweet and salty, and the oats give a really nice texture to the cookie! A new favorite recipe for everyone this Christmas!
I ended up using a sale bag of holiday m&ms plus 1 c choc chips. They are perfect cookies – yum. You never steer me wrong.
Happy New Year!!!