Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

If you’re looking for a perfect peanut butter cookie recipe, this is it. And you won’t find an easier one either. This recipe gets bonus points for being both gluten and dairy free. Also, by using an entire 28 ounce jar of peanut butter you get to skip one messy measuring step.

Ingredients:

1 – 28oz jar of peanut butter – any brand

2 cups sugar + 3Tbsp (divided)

6 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare cookie sheets by covering with parchment paper. I use two pans and re-use the parchment paper on each until I am done baking all the cookies in this recipe.

Scoop the entire jar of peanut butter into a large mixing bowl. I like to use a rubber spatula at the end to make sure I’m getting every bit of PB out that I can. Add all six eggs, two cups of white, granulated sugar, and one teaspoon of vanilla. Stir.

Stir some more – and some more. At first, it is going to look like you’re only going to make a soupy mess. But if you keep stirring for a few minutes – making sure to get all the way down to the bottom of the bowl – the ingredients will come together into a dough that you can actually work with.

Next use two tablespoons (one to scoop the dough and one to scrape it off the other spoon) to drop the dough onto a parchment covered baking sheet. I can usually fit 12 cookies to a standard 13×18″ cookie sheet.

Once you have 12 unbaked cookies on the parchment paper, it’s time to make the traditional crosshatch design. For this you need a fork and a small bowl of about 2-3 Tbsp sugar. Dip the fork into the bowl of raw cookie dough so that the fork becomes a little sticky. Then dip the fork into the bowl of sugar and gently press into the top of a cookie to make lines going one direction. Dip the fork back in the sugar and lightly press down on the cookie again to make lines going the other direction. Repeat for all the remaining cookies on the tray.

Place baking sheet on center rack of preheated oven. Bake for 12-14 minutes – until the cookies are beginning to be golden-brown on the bottom. A note about this: the first tray or two of cookies may take a couple of minutes longer than the remaining trays because after the first go-round, the trays will already be pretty warm when you put the raw dough on them. So it’s like everything after the first tray gets a bit of a head start – watch them closely when you get to the 12 minute mark.

Once you remove the baked cookies from the oven, let them sit on the cookie sheet for about two minutes. Then carefully use a spatula to place them on a rack to begin cooling. Once the cookies have cooled enough to touch with my fingers, I place them on a sheet of wax paper with a dishtowel underneath it until they are completely cooled.

You can store your cookies in an airtight container either at room temperature or in the fridge – I prefer mine refrigerated. They also freeze well – if you can quit eating them long enough to get them to the freezer. Make sure they are not warm at all when you put them in a container, as warm cookies will “sweat” if sealed up. No one wants sweaty cookies.

This recipe makes about 48 generously sized cookies. Remember, in this recipe I measure the raw dough with a tablespoon. If you prefer smaller cookies, you can use a teaspoon instead. But be sure to adjust the baking time so that they don’t burn. I recommend 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees for teaspoon sized cookies.

Enjoy!