Brown Butter Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe

Peanut butter cookies are as classic as they come, but this version leans into deeper, toastier flavors by starting with browned butter. Browning butter transforms it from a simple baking staple into an ingredient with nutty, warm, and caramel-like layers. That complexity enhances the peanut butter in the dough, giving these cookies dimension without veering away from the nostalgic flavor people expect. 

After cooking the butter until the milk solids toast, becoming golden and fragrant, let the brown butter cool until slightly firm. The brown butter then behaves much like softened butter, blending easily with sugar and peanut butter.

These cookies were designed to be soft and chewy, like packaged cookies but better. A mix of brown and granulated sugar ensures spread, tenderness, and just the right amount of caramel sweetness. Peanut butter chips contribute a pop of salty-sweet richness throughout, with extra chips pressed on top for a bakery-style finish. The cookies bake quickly and are intentionally pulled from the oven before the edges brown, ensuring they stay soft after cooling.

The result is cookies that feel familiar yet elevated, ideal for bake sales, gifting, holidays, or simply serving warm with a glass of milk. They also freeze beautifully, so they’re a great make-ahead treat. 

This isn’t the time for natural peanut butter

Natural peanut butter is a simple blend of ground peanuts, often with just salt added, that contains no stabilizers, causing the oils to separate naturally. Because its formula lacks the stabilizers found in conventional peanut butter, the fat can separate and alter the dough’s structure, making cookies spread too much and bake up oily or crumbly. Classic shelf-stable peanut butter provides consistent texture, balanced sweetness, and reliable moisture, producing cookies that hold their shape, stay tender, and deliver that signature chewy bite.

Why aren’t all the peanut butter chips stirred in?

We tested adding more peanut butter chips before baking versus pressing them in after and found that both work. Stirring them in is easier but gives the baked chips a slightly speckled texture. Pressing chips onto the top of the cookie dough is more work but leaves the chips with a nice smooth exterior. 

Notes from the Food & Wine Test Kitchen 

• Bake the cookies only until the edges are set. Any browning indicates firmness rather than the intended soft, chewy texture.
• A #40 scoop yields consistent portions and makes it easier to roll smooth, uniform dough balls.
• Peanut butter chips pressed onto the tops after portioning maintain a glossy, smooth finish once baked.

This recipe was developed by Tricia Manzanero Stuedeman; the text was written by Breana Killeen.