Throughout my entire childhood, my mom worked part-time, which meant that she left us at home during the summers from 7 am until 2 pm. Mom hired a baby-sitter while we were still in grade school, but once I reached middle school, she trusted us to stay by ourselves.
My younger brother and I knew how to serve ourselves breakfast—shake out the cereal box and pour in the milk—but Mom always stocked the fridge with our favorite lunch items of yogurt, bread, cheese, and lots of fruit. However, the jar of peanut butter called my name fairly loudly every once in a while, so I’d wander into the pantry and grab that instead.
On those days, lunch consisted of two things: peanut butter and crackers. I’d dip one buttery cracker into the jar at a time, scraping up at least a teaspoon of peanut butter every time. With 10-15 crackers for lunch, that really added up… And Mom had to buy a fresh jar nearly every other week!
But besides crackers, sandwiches, and toast, we didn’t really eat peanut butter any other way, including desserts. (I always preferred my cookies with lots of chocolate!) But after seeing one too many peanut butter treats on Pinterest, I decided that might need to change and set out to make these…
The Ultimate Healthy Soft & Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies! They’re soft, chewy, and have a prominent nutty peanut butter flavor, but not too much to make you feel bogged down and sluggish. With the irresistible balance of sweet and salty, these won’t last long at all in your cookie jar!
To help you understand what makes these the ultimate healthy peanut butter cookies, let’s talk a little baking science. (Or feel free to skip this section and head straight to the recipe!)
First off, the dry ingredients. I chose white whole wheat flour because it gives you the benefits of fiber and extra nutrients like with regular whole wheat flour, but it has a lighter, less wheat-y taste. Then you’ll need baking powder for rise and just a hint of salt. Most peanut butters already come salted, so adjust the amounts to suit your tastes.
The rest of the ingredients proved to be a bit trickier, so let’s move on to sugar. I started out by trying honey, but that added too much moisture to the cookie dough. The cookies spread as flat as pancakes, even with over 3 hours of chilling, and they tasted like muffins—not cookies!
I switched to brown sugar and coconut sugar next because they’re both solid sugars, so they didn’t add the same moisture. Both of these options taste exactly the same (no tropical coconut taste, I promise!), but they look a little different. The coconut sugar cookies are darker and look speckled because the coconut sugar doesn’t dissolve quite as well. But that doesn’t affect their taste or texture!
Note: Coconut sugar is clean eating friendly, while brown sugar is not.
And now for the most important part… The peanut butter! I tried making these cookies with 8, 9, and 10 tablespoons. The first batch didn’t have quite enough peanut butter flavor—just a little too faint for my tastes—but the batch with 10 tablespoons turned out a little greasier than I wanted. So to quote Goldilocks, 9 tablespoons was “just right!”
I originally tried using pure peanut butter and an egg as the fat sources, but those cookies failed the spread, even without chilling. To increase the spread, I omitted the egg yolk and added in a tiny bit of butter because butter melts when heated. The resulting cookies spread a tiny bit (think a few millimeters), so you’ll still need to flatten the cookie dough to the thickness and width that you want.
My secret to soft and chewy cookies? Slightly underbake them (not a second more than is called for in the recipe!), and leave them on the warm pan to cool for longer. This allows the centers to continue cooking all the way through without the outsides turning crisp and crunchy. The cookies will stay soft and chewy for an entire week—if they last that long!
So grab a glass of milk, your favorite jar of peanut butter, and start baking! And when you make your own, remember to snap a picture and share it on Instagram using #amyshealthybaking and tagging @amyshealthybaking IN the photo itself! (That guarantees I’ll see your picture! ?) I’d love to see your cookies and feature them in my Sunday Spotlight series!
| The Ultimate Healthy Soft & Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies | | Print |
- 2 cups (240g) white whole wheat or gluten-free* flour (measured like this)
- 1 ½ tsp (4g) baking powder
- ¼ tsp (2g) salt
- 1 tbsp (14g) unsalted butter or coconut oil, melted and cooled slightly
- 2 large egg whites, room temperature
- 2 tsp (10mL) vanilla extract
- 9 tbsp (144g) homemade creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup (192g) coconut sugar or brown sugar
- Preheat the oven to 350°F, and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the butter, egg whites, and vanilla. Stir in the peanut butter until completely incorporated. Stir in the sugar. Add in the flour mixture, stirring just until incorporated.
- Roll the dough into 24 balls, and place onto the prepared baking sheets. Flatten to the desired thickness and width. Bake at 350°F for 9-11 minutes. Cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.
Whole wheat pastry flour, regular whole wheat flour, and all-purpose flour may be substituted for the white whole wheat flour.
I highly recommend using my easy homemade creamy peanut butter recipe. (It only takes 5 minutes to make!) This recipe works best with natural-style peanut butter made with just peanuts and salt. It will also work with Skippy Natural creamy peanut butter. Do not use crunchy peanut butter; the cookies won't turn out.
Coconut sugar is clean eating friendly, while brown sugar is not.
The cookies barely spread at all during baking, so flatten them to the desired thickness and width before placing the baking sheets in the oven.
The cookie dough should look crumbly when you first mix it up, but as long as you can roll it into balls without the balls falling apart, it's the right consistency! If your cookie dough is too dry to roll into balls, add milk one tablespoon at a time until the cookie dough holds together.
{gluten-free, clean eating, low fat}
View Nutrition Information + Weight Watchers Points
Amy
We’re having yet another snow day and these made the PERFECT afternoon project. They are indeed incredible : )
I made mine with brown sugar and Skippy Natural creamy peanut butter since that’s what I had.
They will never last more than 2 days at my house… we go through a jar of peanut butter a week !!! I use it for sandwich’s, crackers, in my oatmeal … and daily with just a spoon !
Thanks again for a wonderful recipe ~
I’m so glad you enjoyed the cookies Kimberly! I’m a huge fan of my daily PB spoon too. 🙂 Skippy Natural creamy PB is my current favorite, so I completely believe that it disappears in a week at your house!
Thank you I will try them. I am a type diabetic any idea of the Carbs for this recipe? Thank you, Mark Paull markpaull56@gmail.com
The full nutrition information is included underneath the recipe! 🙂 I can’t wait to hear what you think of the cookies Mark!
I LOVE science talk when it comes to baking, seriously…do that more!! So fun to read about the process behind it all.
Aww thanks Brittany! It’s one of my favorite parts, but… I always think I’m going to bore people if I include too much. 😉
YUMMERS! SOFT, CHEWY, PEANUT-BUTTERY! I’ll raid your kitchen ANY time, Amy! <3
PLEASE DO! And while you’re at it, please move up here too… Like, soon. ♥
These look perfectly soft and chewy! Love a good peanut butter cookie!
Thanks Jessica!
I have to say I have never been a fan of peanut butter cookies, unless they have chocolate chips in them, but the chewy factor here is calling to me
Thanks Heather! My favorite PB cookies have chocolate chips too. I think we’re both huge chocoholics at heart, right? 🙂
Peanut butter is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? I will never miss an opportunity to eat a peanut butter cookie. It’s even better that you made these healthier! Love this.
Thanks Erin! And yes, I will never pass up an opportunity to eat PB… Whether straight from the jar or in dessert!
The first time I leave Jordan alone with the pantry she’ll make herself an Oreo lunch and a Rolo breakfast, no joke. These cookies look so good!
Thanks Dorothy! I’m sure if you had any of those mint chip sweet rolls lying around, she’d go for those first… Knowing how much she loves that combo! 😉
Wow, these peanut butter cookies are much healthier than other recipes that I have seen… but would this recipe work with chunky peanut butter? I really want to make these but that’s all I have. And could I use half whole wheat and half all purpose flour? I don’t have white whole wheat flour at home.
Yes to everything! Chunky PB should work, and you could even use pure whole wheat flour if you wanted the cookies to be as healthy as the original recipe. But yes, half AP would work too. A whole egg would work too, but the cookies will be a little greasier. I hope you enjoy them!
Oh and would a whole egg work?
Amy,
I made these cookies today, I must have done something wrong as the dough was very crumbly, and would not come together. May be it’s the sugar I used – turbinado….I added an extra egg white and butter. They have a good taste but not chewy and soft at all. Do you have any idea what I did wrong? Thanks. Larisa
I’m sorry Larisa; that must have been disappointing. If the cookie dough was dry, then most likely there was too much flour in it. How did you measure the flour? I’ve found that if I scoop the flour directly from the container, I end up with 1.5 times as much as when I lightly spoon and level. (I describe exactly how to do that here.) That would definitely make the cookies dry and cakey!
Larisa, same thing happened with mine too
I’m sorry to hear that Cheryl! We talked about the potential reasons in the comment below yours, so hopefully that helps you too! 🙂