Basic Peanut Butter Cookie Dough

My favorite dough in this basic cookie dough series has to be this basic peanut butter cookie dough. It’s so easy and makes the most delectable soft, chewy, cracked top peanut butter cookies. You don’t even need to add anything to these cookies, but you sure could, if you wanted to.

The basics are the best

Now that we’ve covered my basic sugar cookie dough and my regular basic cookie dough; it seems appropriate that we add my basic peanut butter cookie dough into the mix too, don’t you think?

This peanut butter cookie dough recipe is so super-duper simple and like all of my other basic doughs, it’s pretty much no-fail and uses only a handful of common ingredients. #winnerwinnerchickendinner

How to make this basic peanut butter cookie dough

1. Make sure you have a stick of room temperature butter to start with. Then, in a large bowl, cream the butter, sugar, and brown sugar together with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes, until light and fluffy.
2. Add the egg and vanilla extract and continue mixing for another minute.
3. Fold in the peanut butter and mix until smooth.
4. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and sea salt.
5. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing with the electric mixer for a minute or so. Then with a rubber spatula, continue mixing until the flour is mostly incorporated. Avoid over-mixing the dough.
6. Once the dough is made, you can make the cookies as noted below, or freeze it for baking at a later time (see the freezing directions below).

Special instructions for you

• For the highest success rate with this recipe, I recommend weighing the dry ingredients with a digital food scale. I know it’s kind of annoying, but it really helps – trust me. Using the correct amount of each ingredient will ensure you get the same results every time.
• Using an electric mixer will not only speed up the process, but it will ensure the butter and sugars are properly creamed prior to baking, which is important. You’ll want to cream the butter and sugars for 2 minutes. At first, the mixture will become crumbly; keep going. After a minute or so, it’ll start to smooth out and become smoother, light colored, and fluffy looking.
• You can use whatever size cookie scoop you want with this dough. It’s very stable and consistent. I often use a 1.5 TBS scoop to make smaller cookies, but my personal favorite is a 3 TBS scoop. For 3 TBS scoop size cookies, you’ll need to increase the baking time by a minute or so (to 10-ish minutes).
• This basic peanut butter cookie dough is a light and fluffy dough, so it’s not the best for handling or rolling into a ball. It’s more for just scooping, dropping, and baking. If you’re looking for a dense peanut butter dough you can roll for something like Hershey’s kiss cookies, this is the recipe you’ll want to use.

Other basic cookie dough recipes for you

• Basic Cookie Dough For Mix-ins
• Basic Sugar Cookie Dough