Best Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe - Simple Joy (2024)

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How to Make Peanut Butter Cookies

This is an easy cookie recipe that even a beginning baker can tackle. This is a brief overview, but you will want to read the full instructions at the bottom of the post (either scroll to the bottom or hit the jump to the recipe button at the top of the page).

1. Combine the dry ingredients. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
2. Combine the “wet” ingredients. Cream the butter with the brown sugar and granulated sugar, then add in the butter, eggs, and vanilla.
3. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Don’t miss my tips on this below.
4. Form into cookies and bake. Scoop the cookies onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Press down with a fork to make a hash mark, and bake.

Cookie Scoop

Using a cookie scoop not only speeds up the process, it keeps your cookies uniform in size so they bake evenly.

Baking Sheets

These baking sheets are my absolute favorite. They bake everything to perfection.

How to Measure Flour for Peanut Butter Cookies

Improperly measured flour is the number one cause for baking fails. Too much flour and you have cookies that aren’t going to spread. Of course, if you don’t use enough flour your cookies won’t come together.

Here are step by step instructions to measuring flour.

1. Whisk the flour in the container it comes in: This will loosen up the flour and is the first step to preventing the flour from packing.
2. Grab a dry measuring cup. These are usually metal or plastic and come in 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, and 1 cup measurements. Do not use a glass measuring cup with lines on the side.
3. Scoop the flour out of the container into a dry measuring cup using a spoon.
4. Level the flour off with the flat end of a spatula.

Avoiding Over Mixing

For years, cookie recipes have been warning users to not “over-mix” their dough. Over mixing cookie dough will over activate the gluten in the flour and this will result in a cookie that is tough. They have suggested that adding just a little of the dry ingredients at a time to the creamed butter and sugar is the way to go.

I have learned that you will be less likely to over mix if you add all the flour at once. To do this, you add all of the dry ingredients at once. Turn your mixer on very low and get it incorporated just enough that when you turn up your mixer the flour won’t fly out of the bowl. Then you crank the mixer up all the way for just a matter of seconds until the flour is just incorporated. The end result is dough that has mixed for a fraction of the time compared to mixing in a little of the flour mixture at a time.

Freezing Peanut Butter Cookie Dough

Nothing really beats a cookie hot out of the oven. The good news is that this peanut butter cookie dough freezes really well and bakes great from frozen.

1. Make the cookie dough up to the point of baking.
2. Instead of putting the dough in the oven, put the pressed down dough onto a wax paper lined plate.
3. Freeze on the plate for 1 hour.
4. Remove and transfer to an airtight container in the freezer.

You can store it like this for 3 months. When you are ready to bake, put the frozen dough (as many cookies as you would like to make), on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 11 to 12 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

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