These are our cookies – the best ever peanut butter chocolate chip cookies! They’re adapted from Deb of Smitten Kitchen, who adapted them from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook. We can eat these forever, they are, for us, perfect! They are soft-centered, they are crispy-edged, they have crunchy nuts, gooey chocolate, and that perfect salt to sugar ratio.
But more than introduce OUR COOKIE, we want to introduce our method for cookie perfection. Ellie is lucky enough to have a friend, an Upper East Side mom who regularly entertains in the Hamptons and that mom knows how to host, how to juggle 20 things, and how to do it like it’s a magic trick. And we learned this cookie method from her.
It’s simple: mix up a huge batch of cookies, freeze them on trays, place the uncooked, frozen cookies into a large, labeled ziploc bag in your freezer. Cook off cookies as needed (adding 1-2 extra minutes of cook time).
This is great if you live alone and can’t really use a full batch of cookies, or if there’s a political or world catastrophe and you need to have access to warm cookies for emotional support, or if you have a planned dinner party and too much going on to make something totally new.
We promise you, having a bag of ready to cook, frozen cookies in your back pocket is the way to go. Being able to greet guests with warm cookies is magic.
Best Ever Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 2½ cups all purpose flour
- 1½ teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 cups smooth peanut butter
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1½ cups sugar, plus more for rolling
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup dark chocolate chips
- ½ cup roasted peanuts, roughly chopped (lightly salted is great here)
Directions
- Step 1 In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- Step 2 In a separate mixing bowl, beat the peanut butter and butter together until fully combined and fluffy.
- Step 3 Beat the sugars into the butters mixture. Add the eggs one at a time and beat thoroughly. Add the milk and vanilla extract.
- Step 4 Gently beat in the bowl of flour a little at a time, making sure it is fully incorporated.
- Step 5 Stir in the chocolate chips and chopped peanuts.
- Step 6 Chill the dough until it is manageable, ideally a couple hours.
- Step 7 Break off tablespoon sized amounts and roll into balls. Roll the balls in a bowl of sugar before pressing slightly flat with the back of a fork.
- Step 8 Freeze these cookies on sheet trays. (We do a sheet at a time in our tiny Brooklyn freezer, placing the bowl of dough back in the fridge while we wait for the cookies to freeze until firm, therefore making space for another tray of cookies to freeze.)
- Step 9 Bake frozen cookies for 11-13 minutes at 350ºF. They will not be fully crisp but they will be firm and the edges will be crisp. Allow to cool on the pan one minute before moving to a wire rack. Bake fresh, unfrozen cookies for 10-12 minutes.
