This bakery style Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookies recipe makes cookies that are big and chewy in the middle. The have slightly crisp edges with soft chewy in the centre – they have just enough peanut butter flavor and loads of chocolate chips – totally my favorite peanut butter cookie recipe with chocolate chips or chocolate chunks. These Soft Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookes are easy to make and irresistible. I can’t wait for you guys to try them.
Ingredients:
- Butter: I used unsalted butter because it makes it easier to control the amount of salt in recipe. And for this recipe its ok to use chilled butter but cut it up into cubes or small pieces – no need to wait til its softened or room temperature
- Peanut Butter: Use creamy peanut butter in this recipe not natural peanut butter which is the runny kind with oil separating it. This recipe will not really work as well with natural peanut butter.
- White Sugar: You can use granulated white sugar or organic cane sugar.
- Brown Sugar: The combination of white sugar and brown sugar give these cookies their distinct texture.
- Flour: I recommend using all-purpose flour to make these peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. You could definitely make them gluten free with a good quality flour like Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 gluten free baking flour.
- Chocolate Chips: As you can see from my cookie collection, sometimes I use chocolate chunks, chopped chocolate, or chocolate chips. It doesn’t matter what you use, as long as you use the allotted amount. I find that chopped chocolate melts a lot better and gives you more chocolate puddles in your cookies. I like to use a mixture of bittersweet or dark chocolate chips and either semi-sweet chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips but you could use one or the other.
- Eggs: There are two in this recipe. Make sure they are room temperature.
- Baking Soda & Powder: A little bit of both in this recipe – both acting as leavener.
- Cornstarch – a little goes a long way – cornstarch helps make these cookies more tender. Don’t skip it even though it may seem Unusual – it helps make these cookies tender and soft in the middle
- Vanilla: A definite must in this recipe – they just won’t be the same without it for that delicious flavour vanilla adds to them
- Extra Add Ins: feel free to toss in some chopped peanuts (1 tablespoon or up to 3) if you would like a nuttier version if these cookies
How to Make These Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe
Here are the simple steps involved in making these tasty cookies:
- Whisk together your dry ingredients
- Use a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or electric mixer to beat the butter with the sugars, peanut butter, then add the eggs and vanilla and mix until smooth and ribbony
- Mix in the dry ingredients a little at a time until just combined. Do not over mix
- Mix in the Chocolate chips/chunks
- Scoop dough onto prepared pans and bake
To Chill or Not to Chill?
This is up to you! I love this recipe because you DO NOT have to chill especially as you are using chilled butter, but if you want to make the dough ahead you definitely can and chill it until you are ready to bake them. Chilling allows more time for the dough to hydrate and results in chewier thicker cookies. Here is the breakdown.
- No chilling: What happens if you don’t refrigerate dough before baking? The cookies will spread out a little more and the edges will be crispier.
- Chill for 30 min to 1 hour: The cookies will be little thicker, have a little chew and a lot of crisp, chill the dough for 1 hour.
- Chill for 2+ hours: The cookies will be thicker with less crisp, chill the dough for 2 hours or longer. I appreciate that this cookie recipe works all 3 ways. I don’t chill the first batch I bake but I usually chill the dough between baking each batch and the result is always perfect. You can experiment and see which you like best – you won’t be disappointed whatever you decide.
- Is it better to put cookie dough in fridge before baking? that is up to your taste and also how much time you have on hand and how strong your craving is for these cookies. If you prefer thicker chewier cookies than by all means chill the dough – if you need to fill that cookie craving fast then feel free to bake these off right away
- If you decide to chill your dough before baking – Let the dough sit at room temperature just until it is soft enough to scoop before baking – I usually take it out while the oven is preheating
How to Make Chewy Chocolate Chip or Chunk Cookies
How do you make cookies chewy? What makes a cookie chewy vs soft? Both good questions. One of the keys to CHEWY cookies is to use more brown sugar than granulated sugar. The molasses in the brown sugar draws in more moisture, making the cookies thicker, softer, and chewier. For extra chewy cookies, try adding an extra egg yolk to this recipe. You can also replace half or all of the all-purpose flour in this recipe with bread flour for an ultra chewy bite. Chilling the dough also helps prevent the cookies from spreading – therefore you get thicker cookies and chewier ones too.
How to freeze chocolate chip cookie dough
Portion dough, roll into balls and freeze in a single layer in an airtight container for up to 2 months. You can either let the dough completely defrost overnight in the fridge or for a couple hours at room temperature and bake just as the recipe originally instructed. OR, you can bake from frozen:
- Preheat the oven to about 20°F lower than the original recipe temperature.
- Remove however many cookie dough balls of dough you need from the freezer and place on a parchment-lined baking pan.
- Bake the cookies for 2 to 5 minutes longer than the original recipe instructions, or until the cookies are golden at the edges but still slightly ‘wet’ looking at the very center.
Storage
Storage: The cookies will keep in an airtight container for up to 3-5 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months.
Tips For Making Great Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies Every time
- I recommend using high-quality chocolate chunks for this recipe or chocolate chops. You can buy bars of chocolate and chop them into chunks that is what I usually do. I prefer this method because it allows me to control the size of the chunks and I find the melt better too. Of course, you could also use an equal amount of chocolate chips.
- Don’t over bake! Your cookies should be set at the edges and golden but may still look soft in the center.
- Be sure to allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring baked cookies to a cooling rack or wire rack so they don’t fall apart as your transfer them.
- If you’d like your cookies to look like the ones you see in my photos, and the trick to chocolate puddles, press a few chocolate chunks on top of each cookie right after they come out of the oven. You can also sprinkle them with flaky sea salt. Which I always love to do.
- Chill dough in between batches
- Start checking cookies at the ten minute mark because all stoves are different and ensure your oven is preheated
- For that bakery look ( or Instagram instagram worthy look) make sure to add extra chocolate chips to dough balls before and after baking – simply press some into the cookies they will settle into the dough fro the heat of the cookies
- The pan you bake these cookies on definitely matters – I use heavy duty light coloured non stick baking sheets which really distribute the heat evenly. Stainless steal pans will cause some spreading and possibly uneven baking – if that doesn’t happen just shape the cookies with a spatula as soon as they come out oven. Never use dark colored pans to bake cookies – they tend to over bake cookies
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