These soft, thick, melt-in-your-mouth peanut butter cookies may be the only peanut butter cookie recipe you ever use again. Some readers say the cookies taste like the inside of a peanut butter cup—YUM! You need just 9 ingredients and the dough can be adapted in many ways to make different variations like peanut butter blossoms and peanut butter jam thumbprints.
Why hello there, peanut butter cookie lovers. You’ve come to the right place! This may look familiar, as I have shared a number of peanut butter cookie recipes over the years. But believe me when I say this one is the one to keep in the front of your recipe folder.
This go-to, flagship peanut butter cookies recipe is the same dough used to make these popular peanut butter blossoms among the other 6+ variations listed below. The recipe stands the test of time and even after publishing dozens of other peanut butter recipes online and in my cookbooks… THIS IS THE BEST ONE.
You can find the full printable recipe below, but first let me tell you some of the keys to recipe success, starting with the ingredients.
Chilling the cookie dough in the refrigerator before baking the cookies is crucial to this recipe’s success. The dough is incredibly creamy, almost like peanut butter frosting, and you’ll have a heck of a time trying to roll and bake such a soft dough. Set aside 1–2 hours for chilling, or do yourself a favor and make the dough the night before.
Expect a VERY creamy cookie dough:
After chilling, the cookie dough solidifies and it’s easier to roll into balls:
Today’s cookies have been my go-to for a decade. If you want to compare, here are 2 other peanut butter cookie doughs and how they differ:
The following recipes use today’s dough. (Note that the plain cookies have an extra Tablespoon of flour to retain shape because we’re flattening with a fork.)
So whether you’re looking for a classic criss-cross cookie or want to add some flair, this soft-baked peanut butter cookie is the ideal base recipe for many variations.
These are the softest, thickest peanut butter cookies! You need just 9 ingredients for the base recipe, and it can be adapted in so many ways to make different variations (see post above). Do not skip chilling the dough.
