Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

in Chocolate, Cookies and Bars, Peanut Butter

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Some little known facts about me:

Before retiring a couple of years ago – or maybe I’m just on sabbatical, I haven’t decided yet – I was a project manager in the tech industry. My clients made iThingies and super expensive servers and magical photo editing software that lets you zap that jerky ex-boyfriend out of any photo and replace him with any Hollywood or NFL cutie (I vote the latter). I miss it. But only sometimes. Usually when my kid has a set of molars coming in.

I never soften butter for baking recipes. Ever. Those recipes that call for a softened stick of butter? I throw a straight-from-the-fridge stick of butter in the mixer bowl and just turn it on medium-high while I get the rest of the ingredients out. I’m just gonna cream the heck out of it anyway, right?

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

We named our daughter after the greatest NFL coach of all time. And the most annoying female character on Lost of all time.

I’ve never been as sick, so often, in my previous 33 years than I have been over the last 11 months. Ever. My daughter started preschool 11 months ago. These things are not unrelated. I’m almost certain that her school hires the Outbreak monkey to clean her classroom with dirty needles and used Kleenexes at the end of the school day.

As the daughter of two bakers and a reformed bakery brat myself – I still have that dream a couple of times a month where I’ve overslept and didn’t get to the bakery in time to bake croissants and muffins – I know better than to ever, ever want to open my own bakery. The hours. The overhead. The hours! No thanks. And any job that actually makes you hate the smell of baked goods should be illegal.

And when giving the choice between every fancy dessert in the world and a warm chocolate chip cookie, I’ll take the cookie 9/10 times – there’s no such thing as a bad chocolate chip cookie.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Okay, that’s not true. Remind me to tell you about the one time my mom opened the cabinet door and the canister of garlic salt came tumbling down into the mixer bowl. Those were turrible. But you know what I mean.

As long as you mostly follow directions – and don’t add 1/4 cup of garlic salt – you’re going to get a good chocolate chip cookie. But you can make a good chocolate chip cookie even better and that’s what we did here. We replaced half the butter with peanut butter, used more chocolate than we were supposed to, and added peanuts.

They’re gigantic and the perfect combination of chewy cookie, chocolate, and peanut butter.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Perfectly thick and chewy peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies studded with peanuts.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter (softened... or not)
  • 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 cups + 2 Tbsp flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 16 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
  • 3/4 cup unsalted peanuts chopped

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 375.
  2. Cream the butter and peanut butter together until uniform.
  3. Add sugars and cream 2-3 minutes, until fluffy.
  4. Add the eggs one at a time followed by the vanilla.
  5. Stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl.
  6. Add to the mixer bowl and mix just until blended.
  7. Add the chocolate chunks and nuts to the bowl, mixing until distributed. The dough will be very stiff and even a little crumbly.
  8. Divide the dough into 16 balls, approximately 4 oz each (think larger than a golf ball; a 2.5-inch scoop will do the trick perfectly) and place on a lined baking pan.
  9. Chill the dough for 20 minutes (you can also freeze dough at this point). Bake 6 cookies per pan (they're huge!) for 18-22 minutes or until browned on the edges and just set in the center.
  10. Let cool for 10 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely.
  11. They'll keep several days in an airtight container or zip top bag.

Notes

Yields: ~16 cookies

Adapted from Levain Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

Estimated time: 45 minutes

38 comments… add one
  • I absolutely LOVE how thick these are! And I’m cracking up over some of your tidbits. I can completely relate to the sickest year ever due to preschool. Crazy monkeys with dirty needles for sure.

  • I’m stumped on your daughter’s name. I know people thought Kate was annoying on Lost (although I liked her). But I can’t think of an NFL coach with that name. I thought Juliet was annoying…but again, can’t come up with a coach. Love that you named her after one, though!

    • Her name is Landry (Tom Landry) Kate (Lost). I found Kate to be *SUPER* annoying but we loved the name, short and beautiful. So we took it 🙂

      • heather_kaye

        See, and here I thought for sure it would be Shannon…

        Kate is underappreciated!

        🙂

      • Suzie

        He was the greatest NFL coach EVER. The Cowboys used to having training camp where I grew up and we would watch them every summer. Because my dad was a local doctor, he helped out with physicals, etc. so we got behind the scenes access to the team. Mr. Landry was such a nice man, and I will never ever forget the sight of a HUGE lineman cowering and crying over getting his blood drawn. Hilarious.

  • The whole Landry thing is what made me assume you were a Cowboys fan. You can’t say they aren’t a dynasty! These cookies look great, btw.

  • This post was full of interesting tidbits! It calls for a list:

    I’d need a whole gallon of milk to eat with those cookies, which look divine.

    I love the name Landry.

    We went through boxes and boxes of Kleenex after our oldest started preschool. On the plus side, I like to think that as a result we will someday be immune to everything but HIV, simply because we’ll have already been exposed to it all and our insides will be positively swimming with antibodies.

  • Dan

    So I have to admit I have been stalking your blog with my RSS reader for a while now but not being a fa of cherries and being mostly a meat-n-potatos guy, I hadn’t run across anything I HAD to make.
    These cookies might be the tipping point as I’m a huge PB fan.

    As a side note, my daughter went through the normal pre-school madness and was sick alot.
    My son (younger) however WAS the Crazy Needle-wielding monkey. This kid brought home EVERYTHING. It got so bad that about 18 months ago in Feb, he only attended his school 5 days (mostly not consecutive) out of the entire 4 weeks. March was only mildly better. My wife and I both burned through our sick time and half our annual vacation time that season.
    I gave my wife an ultimatum and said we could either sign her paycheck over to an in home day-nanny for a year or two until he gets over it, or we could pull my son out, put the daughter on a shorter schedule (cheaper too) and my wife could be a SAHM. Being she was a public school teacher the net income to the family was almost no change. She stressed for a month and then chose to be a SAHM.
    OMG the difference. This past Feb, I think he had the sniffles twice, each lasted maybe 2-3 days and there was no trip to the Urgent Care, there were no more Antiobiotics, the nebulizer and Albuterol were only brought out once the entire winter season, etc etc etc.

    I think those schools need to partner with Clorox or somebody to invent a cleaning bomb. Would work similar to a bug-bomb and each classroom would be bombed at least twice a week.

    -Dan

  • Mmmm love this!

  • i need these cookies in my life!!! they look so hearty and delicious 😀

  • Love the cookies, your daughter’s name and the story behind it!

  • I love your take on the soft butter : ) These cookies sound delicious. I am making some, soon.

  • These look absolutely amazing! I love how thick and loaded with chocolate these are!

  • Great!! Just hours after telling my husband, “I can’t just bake the same chocolate chip peanut butter cookie recipe over and over.” Haha. He will be eternally grateful that I have a new recipe to try out and he can once again enjoy his beloved chocolate/peanut butter cookie combination. 🙂

  • These cookies look outrageous!

  • Yay! I’m not the only one who doesn’t soften butter!! These look SO delicious. 🙂

  • Oh sweet chocolate peanut butter goodness, how you have won me over. I used to hate the PB & C combo but I’ve turned from my wicked ways and finally seen the light! How could I not with pictures like those?

    And I 100% agree with you on the fancy dessert vs. chocolate chip cookie front. I have labored for days over layer cakes and stressed over the perfect cheesecake and still nothing satisfies quite like a tried and true chocolate chip cookie. The simpler the better.

  • I rarely put actual peanut in my peanut butter cookies and I don’t know why!

  • Haha. Love this post. And these cookies! So big and fat. Those are the best kinds of cookies. I’m going to make your chewy peanut butter cookies in the next few days, just because they remind me of Braum’s. But I have to make these too!

  • I’m kind of in love with you for not softening your butter. And for making these. You’re also my hero.

  • I throw cold butter in the mixer too! I can NEVER wait for it to soften (and I don’t have a microwave to speed the process)

  • I agree – I would take chocolate chip cookies over fancy desserts any day!

  • These looks so yummy 🙂

  • You had me at peanut butter 🙂

  • The perfect PB chocolate chip cookies!

  • Holy yum! Now that I don’t have to squeeze into a swimsuit until next summer, bring on the cookies!!

  • Yum, these look amazing! I want one right now! Ok, I really want two 🙂

  • Kate

    These look amazing, and I have already baked a batch and they taste amazing too! Incidentally, you named your daughter Chuck Noll??? 😉

  • These look perfect! And I love huge cookies 🙂 I had no idea that you could just put cold butter in the mixer!

  • Oh these look perfect!

  • OH MY! These look divine. And, Elliott’s first week in daycare was last week. By Friday he had some sniffles & snot. By Monday I had a sore throat & felt like shit. 😐

  • These are definitely going into the rotation!

    erin – ekcantcook.blogspot.com

  • Alison

    These look awesome!
    Question::: can you use the natural peanut butter with these or would the oils effect the mixture?

    • I don’t cook with natural peanut butter so I’d hate to tell you that it would be okay to use. I do know that generally natural pb is discouraged in baking due to the oils. I’d recommend making a half-batch to test it out.

  • sarah

    all i can say is yum. i just ate two right out of the oven….and i suppose i will use some self-control and wait to have my third one AFTER dinner. thanks so much for the great recipe!

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