Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
What I love about this recipe is that it combines three cookie jar favorites into one so you don’t have to choose: peanut butter, oatmeal, and chocolate chip. These peanut butter chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies are perfect for people who are explicitly in love with the chocolate and peanut butter combination. They bake up thick, chewy (thanks to the oats), and soft with slightly crispy edges (the way a cookie should be).
I think you’ll want to go ahead and start preheating your oven before you even read the rest of this post…
Key Ingredients for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
- Peanut Butter: Use a non-natural peanut butter like Jif creamy or Skippy creamy. I don’t suggest using natural peanut butter as it produces fragile and sandy tasting cookies. Crunchy peanut butter works OK, but I find the cookies taste a little dry with it.
- Oatmeal: Make sure to use regular old-fashioned rolled oats in this recipe, as opposed to instant/quick-cooking oats.
- Sugar: This recipe only uses a total of 3/4 cup of sugar (granulated and dark brown), meaning you can’t reduce the sugar without seriously affecting the final structure and texture of the cookies. These cookies aren’t overly sweet though, don’t worry!
- Chocolate: I love using dark chocolate in cookies (and all baked goods for that matter), but since I cut back on the amount of sugar used… I went with a semisweet chocolate for this recipe. When it comes to baking with chocolate, make sure to use the highest quality one that has the fewest ingredients.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookie Recipe: Troubleshooting and FAQ
Can I Reduce the Sugar?
Unfortunately, no. It’s doing more than lending a sweet flavor. It’s actually helping to keep these cookies nice and moist and soft. If you were to reduce the amount of sugar the cookies would likely be crumbly and dry.
Can I Use Coconut Sugar instead of Brown Sugar?
Nope! These peanut butter chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies use baking soda to react with the brown sugar (which is slightly acidic, thanks to the molasses in it) to give the cookies their signature chewy texture. Unfortunately, coconut sugar doesn’t have this same acidic quality; so if you use coconut sugar instead of brown sugar in this recipe, your cookies will likely be flatter and spread far too much.
Do I Have to Chill the Cookie Dough?
Yes, you MUST chill the cookie dough for at least 30 minutes. If you bake the un-chilled dough, the cookies will come out thinner and crispier. This cookie dough is a bit on the oily side before chilling and it becomes less oily as it chills.
How Can You Tell When the Cookies Are Done Baking?
Remove these cookies from the oven while they still look ever so slightly underdone in the center. The residual heat of the pan will continue to finish cooking them to soft perfection.
Help! My cookies spread way too much and look thinner than yours. What did I do wrong?
Did you skip the chilling period and bake the cookies right away? If so, that means that the dough was likely too warm; this can also happen when your butter is too softened.
Alternatively, if you chilled the cookie dough and your cookies still came out too thin, you may have an ingredients issue. It’s likely that you used way too much sugar by accidentally packing in too much in the measuring cup.
Help! My cookies came out way too puffy. What did I do wrong?
If you used cup measures as opposed to weight measures, there’s a larger chance your cookies will come out puffy. Why? As weird as this sounds, measuring cups aren’t as accurate as you think. For example, somebody who scoops the measuring cup into the flour will have way more than somebody who uses a spoon to scoop the flour into the same sized measuring cup. This is why you should really be measuring by weight with a kitchen scale instead—it’s much more reliable and completely eliminates any inconsistencies.
Alternatively, if you measured your ingredients by weight and the cookies still came out too puffy, you likely let the dough chill for too long. I like to remove the cookie dough from the fridge and let them sit on the counter for about 5 minutes to allow for the dough to slightly thaw. This ensures cookies that fall flat when baking.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 115 g unsalted butter softened
- 110 g dark brown sugar
- 50 g granulated sugar
- 130 g creamy peanut butter
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 90 g old-fashioned oats
- 150 g all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp coarse sea salt
- 285 g 64% cacao dark chocolate roughly chopped
- flaky sea salt for topping
Instructions
-
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars on medium-high speed until creamed, about 2 minutes. Add the peanut butter, egg, and vanilla and beat on high speed until well combined, about 1 minute.
-
In a medium bowl, whisk together the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until just combined. Once combined, beat in the chocolate chunks. The dough will be thick and sticky.
-
Using a large (3-tablespoon) cookie scoop, drop the dough on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.
-
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
-
Bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly browned on the sides. The centers will look very soft. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
Alternatively, unbaked cookie dough can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or in the freezer for up to 3 months, so consider baking only as many cookies as desired and save the remaining dough to be baked in the future when desired.
Nutrition
MikeBakesNYC LLC owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this website unless authorization is given. If you enjoyed the recipe and would like to publish it on your site, please re-write it in your own words, and link back to my site and recipe page. Read my Disclosure page. This post may contain affiliate links.
