Baking

Peanut butter cookie

Name: Peanut butter cookie recipe
Yield: 15
Ingredients: 180g unsalted butter, softened; 150g brown sugar; 100g caster sugar; 1 large egg, at room temperature; 250g natural crunchy peanut butter (not the sweet stuff!); 100g plain flour; 1/2 tsp bicarb soda; 1/2 tsp baking powder

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by Emelia Jackson

CHEF

Feb 03, 2025

"I can’t tell you how much trouble I had when developing this recipe. I wanted the texture of a chocolate-chip cookie without the chocolate chips and, in their place, an intense peanut butter flavour. Test after test, I got cakey cookies. Or cookies without enough peanut butter flavour. Or cookies that spread to each end of the baking tray and burnt. Deflated and frustrated, I wrote a new list of ingredients as a last-ditch effort, baked them off and… they were perfect. If you only have smooth peanut butter, use that, but crunchy adds nice texture." - Emelia Jackson

This is an edited extract from Some of My Best Friends Are Cookies by Emelia Jackson, published by Murdoch Books, AUD$39.99, available October 29, 2004.

180g unsalted butter, softened
150g brown sugar
100g caster sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
250g natural crunchy peanut butter (not the sweet stuff!)
2/3 cup (100g) plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

Method

1.

Preheat oven to 200°C/180°C fan-forced. Line two baking trays with baking paper or silicone baking mats.
2.

Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugars, egg and peanut butter on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Mix in the flour, bicarb, baking powder and 1 tsp salt flakes. The dough will be super wet, but don’t be tempted to add more flour - the peanut butter will undergo a transformation in the oven and behave much like almond meal does.
3.

Using a cookie scoop, tablespoon or ice-cream scoop, measure out 15 balls of dough, about 50g each, and place them on the baking trays, leaving plenty of room for them to spread.
4.

Bake the cookies for 18 minutes, or until golden brown at the edges. Leave to cool completely on the trays - these are quite high in sugar, so will be difficult to handle if you don’t allow them to cool.