The World’s Best Easy Peanut Butter Cookies are soft and chewy, and made with just 3 ingredients: peanut butter, brown sugar and egg. Devilishly moorish, these truly taste of peanut butter and you may never forgive me for introducing this to you!
3 ingredient desserts are handy emergency recipes, like Chocolate Covered Strawberries and Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars. Everybody loves them and they’re so quick to make!
Peanut Butter Cookies
Having dictated this recipe to 3 people at the dog park in the past week, and having had all 3 approach me afterwards with varying forms of love/hate gestures (“THIS is YOUR FAULT!” one lady wailed, showing me her stomach 😉 ), I decided I had better move this up the posting schedule.
3 ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies are not a new thing, certainly not my invention. I’ve no idea how long they’ve been around for, but what I do know is that every recipe I have seen calls for peanut butter, an egg and WHITE sugar.
It is quite amazing, how much difference it makes just switching white for brown sugar. While I’d never turn down a 3 ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies made with white sugar, they are quite crumbly and crisp. The texture is not really to my taste, and I do feel it’s one of those 3 ingredient recipes where you are compromising on quality quite a bit for the sake of convenience.
But use brown sugar instead… and wow! The difference is astonishing. The cookie is soft and chewy and it has more flavour too, that slight caramel-y flavour that brown sugar has.
Here’s my attempt to capture how chewy and soft these cookies are!
How to make Peanut Butter Cookies
Mix 1 cup peanut butter (the commercial spread stuff, not pure peanut butter), 1 cup brown sugar, 1 egg, flatten 1 tbsp balls on tray, bake 10 minutes at 350F / 180C.
Yes, it’s really that easy!
And here’s a peek into the inside. It’s not dense and gluey which one might expect because they are flourless.
Peanut butter lovers, this recipe is dangerous knowledge to have, especially because it’s so ridiculously simple to remember.
1, 1, 1, 10
1 cup peanut butter.
1 cup brown sugar.
1 egg.
Bake 10 minutes.
It’s stuck in your head now, isn’t it? Go, go! Go make these now! – Nagi x
For the Peanut Butter Obsessed
Peanut Butter Caramel Pie – dangerously easy, outrageously decadent
Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars – just 3 ingredients!
And for Cookie Monsters 🙋🏻♀️
Byron Bay copycat cookies – Choc Chunk, White Choc Macadamia and Chewy Choc Fudge
Watch how to make it
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World’s Best Easy Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup / 265 g peanut butter , smooth or crunchy – commercial spread, NOT pure peanut butter (I use Bega) (Note 1)
- 200 g/ 1 cup , packed, brown sugar (Note 2)
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Place ingredients in a bowl and mix to combine. It will be soft, too soft for scooping. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, preheat oven to 180C / 350F (standard) or 160C/320F (fan / convection).
- Line 2 trays with parchment paper.
- Place 1 tbsp scoops of the dough onto the trays (I use a cookie scoop) 5cm/2″ apart.
- Dip a large fork in a bowl of hot tap water (stops fork sticking to dough). Press down on the dough, then press 90 degrees the other way (watch video) so the cookie is 1 cm / 2/5″ thick. Re-dip fork in water as required.
- Put both trays in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, swapping the trays halfway through, or until light golden on the surface and golden on the edges. (Or longer if you want crisper cookies)
- Leave to cool on the tray. Store in an airtight container for up to 4 – 5 days.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
LIFE OF DOZER
He was so focussed on the peanut butter cookie in my hand, he didn’t realise I left the other half on his head when I gave him a pat….. 😂 SO MEAN!!!!
I have a very similar cookie scoop as yours (shown in the video) and the recipe yielded about 28 cookies not 14. This would make sense because 1 Tb of dough weighs about 15-20 grams and the recipe dough has a total mass of about 515 grams. 515 divided by the weight of 1 Tb of dough will give you an average of 25-34 cookies. Thank you for sharing!
These are amazing! So easy and so delicious. Thanks for always having such reliably yummy recipes x
Can these cookies be frozen?
Really,really easy and delicous, Good idea Nagi!
Hi Nagi, I was wondering, if I use 3/4 or 1/2 cup of sugar instead, will it affect the texture of the cookie? And i had another idea, what if I completely skip the sugar to make dog-friendly cookies? Will it affect the texture then?
Hi Kaitlyn, yes changing the quantities is faint to affect the texture sorry! N x
These are delicious and I’ve been making a version of these cookies for quite awhile. I add a half cup of unsweetened shredded coconut and a half teaspoon of curry powder for a rich warm flavor. Sometimes I add chocolate chips as well.
Oh wow! Your idea with some curry (I’d rather use a tiny bit of chilli) sounds great to make real adult cookies, I will try this!
The only problem with these cookies is they’re so simple to make and I always have these ingredients on hand so it’s too easy to make whenever I crave something sweet! They were just delightful and even better the day after I thought. Yum! Thanks Nagi
Sigh… I tried making these again because I really want to get this right. But again they came out super flat, crispy, candy-like, lace cookie. What am I doing wrong? Maybe I’m not chilling it long enough? I did chill it for 10 minutes in the fridge but the dough was still really soft. Maybe I should be chilling the dough overnight? Help! 🙂
Oh no, sorry you’re having issues, can you tell me what type of peanut butter you’re using?? N x
Hi Nagi! I’m using light peanut butter. Not the natural stuff though, still has the sugar and salt in it, just a bit less calories. Should I chill the dough more? Or use full fat peanut butter? Someone said they used natural pb which is runnier than light and it still worked for her! I’m stumped.
Hi Nagi, I love your recipes!! Just wondering if the biscuits harden as they cool down as when I got them out of the oven, they were still soft. Thank you.
Hi Ella, yes they’ll firm up upon cooling! N x
Hi, Thank you for your recipes just wondering if i can use white sugar?
Hi Maria, it changes the texture of the cookies, but I have heard people using the same weight of white sugar with success 🙂 N x
Hi Nagi,
I made this with 1 cup of sugar but it’s way too sweet. Will it work if I only put 1/2 cup of sugar?
Hi Meazechelle, they are supposed to be sweet – the sugar is what helps set these cookies so I imagine it won’t work if you reduce the amount sorry! N x
Hi Nagi ☺️
Just wondering if I can use dark brown packed sugar for this recipe?
Hi Jasmine, I imagine that will work fine! N x
Can I double this recipe
Hi Cyndi, you can and SHOULD! 😉 N x
Hello Nagi!!!! I love your recipes. Can I substitute the regular brown sugar with ”Splenda Brown Sugar Blend”? Not sure how it will effect the recipe as “Splenda Brown Sugar Blend” only needs half the amount use compared to regular sugar.
Hi Andre, it won’t work quite the same way unfortunately! N x
I love all your recipes. They are easy to follow and delicious. I can’t tell you how many I have saved on Facebook!!!
Thank you 🙂
You’re so welcome Marcela!! N x
These are awesome. I did use my homemade (pure) peanut butter but they still turned out fine.
That’s great to know Adele, thanks so much 🙂 N x
What did I do wrong??? I got flat crisps with no criss cross marks. Like totally flat. Still yummy but nothing like yours.
Hi Lilly, sorry you had issues here – did you make any changes to the ingredients by any chance? Did you refrigerate the dough prior to baking? N x
Oh and yes, I refrigerated the dough, even set the timer for 10 minutes.
Nope, all exactly the same ingredients, I used smooth LIGHT peanut butter, does that matter? Anyway they were really yummy but super flat and almost candy-like. I would actually make them again!
These were simply AMAZING! Super simple ingredients and very easy to put together. And oh btw they are totally GF to boot! Followed recipe as is and just added some crushed peanuts on top!
Love love love! Thank you!
I’m so glad you loved them Kavita, that’s great to hear! N x
Thanks for the recipe…….totally yummy biccies, loved the chewy texture. 🙂
I am going to make these today. I have been wanting homemade peanutbutter cookies for a long time and it’s one that I have never made. Just one question, how long did Dozer keep that cookie on his head before he noticed it? So cute!