By:Nagi
205 Comments
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 ofpeanut 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
Peanut Butter Cheesecake stuffed Chocolate Bread
Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars–just 3 ingredients!
And for Cookie Monsters 🙋🏻♀️
World’s Easiest BEST Chocolate Chip Cookies
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Shortbread Cookies
Anzac Cookies
Ricciarelli (Italian almond cookies)
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
Author: Nagi
Prep: 10 minutes mins
Cook: 10 minutes mins
Total: 20 minutes mins
4.92 from 49 votes
Servings14 cookies
Tap or hover to scale
A better version of the popular 3 ingredient peanut butter cookies! By switching white sugar with brown sugar, these cookies are SOFT and CHEWY instead of crumbly and crisp. They aren’t dense and gluggy, which one might expect because they are made without flour – see the inside of the cookie in the photo in the post. They are not too sweet and they truly taste of peanut butter (rarer than you might think!). Recipe VIDEO below.
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:
1. PEANUT BUTTER: I use Bega Peanut Butter in this recipe which is a “normal” peanut butter spread and it contains oil, salt and sugar as well as peanuts.
Do not use pure peanut butter made with just peanuts or Whipped Peanut Butter because it’s lighter than normal peanut butter and also contains more oil (and other things) to maintain that lighter texture, so I am not sure what that will do to the cookie.
2. There are slight differences in cup sizes between the US and most of the rest of the world. This recipe is not affected by these differences, except if you are in Japan, please use the weights.
3. These are adapted from the popular 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookie recipes that are found all over the internet. The change I made was to switch the white sugar for brown sugar which makes the cookies soft and chewy, rather than crisp and quite crumble.
4. These will keep for 4 – 5 days in an airtight container. They are chewier the next day after baking them, then I find they don’t change much over the next 3 days.
5. Nutrition per cookie, assuming 14 cookies.
Nutrition Information:
Serving: 36gCalories: 168cal (8%)
Did you make this recipe?I love hearing how you went with my recipes! Tag me on Instagram at @recipe_tin.
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!!!!
Hi, I'm Nagi!
I believe you can make great food with everyday ingredients even if you’re short on time and cost conscious. You just need to cook clever and get creative!
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205 Comments
Carla says
Ok Nagi
I measured and mixed (this wont work)
I shaped and baked (this wont work)
Out of the oven
OMG this works!!!
Once again you nailed it thanksReply
- Rebecca Hughes says
My partner loves these, I make them as an occasional treat for him & he rates them highly every time. They are so, so simple and I’ve memorised the recipe (there’s not much to remember to be fair), really an idiot proof dessert. I started jazzing them up with melted chocolate drizzled over the top which my partner said took them to a different level. Today’s batch I put chocolate melts in the middle. The taste tester is not home from work yet to review them but I suspect they’ll be good. They are a little too sweet for myself & our son (yet there’s me adding more sweetness with the chocolate) so if you’re not a sweet tooth I wouldn’t recommend these. - Annette Montijo says
Excellent recipe, extremely tasty, love itReply
- Marbleless says
I accidentally bought a no sugar added peanut butter that my family won’t eat so I use in cooking. I think that made these cookies perfect!Reply
- Erin says
Hi Nagi 🖐 could i add milk chocolate choc chips to these? 😊
Reply
- Tanya says
When I make these, I make 3 batches at a time. I leave one batch plain, the second batch I dip half the biscuit in dark or milk chocolate, depending who they are for. And the last batch I melt Reese’s peanut butter chips with milk chocolate. I found the Reese’s peanut butter chips at Woolworth’s in AustraliaReply
- Ava Ho says
Loved this but found it a bit too sweet when I followed the recipe. I made it again a little less sweet by reducing sugar to 150g (3/4 cup) and adding 2tsp flour.Reply
- Jan says
What a simple recipe, and my husband and son loved them. I didn’t care for them myself, and I’m the peanut butter cookie lover! I thought I didn’t bake them long enough, so I increased the time, they still tasted like I was eating partially raw dough…. I made a batch with crunchy and a batch with smooth. The crunchy looked thicker, like it didn’t need refrigerated, but did. The smooth definitely needed chilled, but at the end of the day, neither one of them baked up right. I even used brand new oven temp gauges to make sure my ovens were heating up to temp. I do love me a bit of a crisper, but not HARD, cookie. I’m rating a 5 because the other 2 in the house really, really liked them.Reply
- Ann says
Can you substitute brown sugar for coconut sugar?
Reply
- Anna says
I tweaked these to cater for a diabetic, and also followed Karin’s advice about how she had changed them using less sugar.
I used only half cup of Stevia, added 2 teaspoons of sifted cacao powder, a tablespoon of the last from the Tahini jar, 100gms of chopped sugar-free chocolate, and 2 tablespoons of almond meal. The almond meal helped bind everything together really well, while still keeping it low carb. I didn’t need to refrigerate it as it was thick enough.
They turned out beautifully; lovely and fudgy inside. I had to let them cool completely before moving them, as they were very soft straight out of the oven.
Love this easy recipe!Reply
- Ms Lalani Hyatt says
You’ve made a totally different recipe! 🙂
Reply
- Karin says
Yay, another 5 star wonder! I have made so many batches of these that I am starting to resemble a peanut butter cookie. I’ve been experimenting with healthier versions and think I have the quantities down pat for anyone who may be interested:
-1 cup of crunchy peanut butter (I use the healthy version with just peanuts and let’s face it, life is too short for smooth peanut butter)
-half a cup of brown sugar
-2-3 teaspoons of pure/unsweetened cacao powder (which you need to “dry up” the dough as it’s too liquidy when you reduce the sugar – mix in 2 tsp first and add a third if it’s still too sticky)
-a couple of rows of good quality dark cooking chocolate roughly chopped (optional for most but mandatory in my home as I take my antioxidants very seriously obviously!)
They will turn out a bit darker because of the cacao powder but they’re really yum and just a tad healthier so you can eat more of them! It usually makes about 13 bikkies with the chocolate added and it’s crunchy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside with Nagi’s suggested 10 mins of baking time, which is perfect!Reply
- Karin says
P.S. Oh goodness, and of course the egg also, which I forgot to mention!!
Reply
- Ruby says
These were a little too sweet for me. Can I reduce the sugar?
Reply
- Becky says
Hi Nagy.
Could I use almond butter instead of peanut butter?Reply
- Jenni says
Hi Nagi, just wondering could the sugar be switched to monkfruit sweetener?
Reply
- cy says
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!
Reply
- Marion says
These are amazing! So easy and so delicious. Thanks for always having such reliably yummy recipes xReply
- Tricia Haney says
Can these cookies be frozen?
Reply
- Benjamin says
Really,really easy and delicous, Good idea Nagi!Reply
- Kaitlyn Rogers says
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?
Reply
- Nagi says
Hi Kaitlyn, yes changing the quantities is faint to affect the texture sorry! N x
Reply
- Maria says
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.Reply
