Puffy Peanut Butter Chip Cookies — Rich vanilla cookie dough is studded with peanut butter chips and baked to puffy perfection! The ultimate soft peanut butter chip cookie with zero frills, just delicious flavor!
Ultra Soft Cookies with Peanut Butter Chips
These cookies turned out so puffy that they caught me by surprise. And they’re so vanilla-ey, but that was by design because I’m a vanilla fiend.
They are a little bit peanut buttery even though I didn’t add peanut butter to the actual cookie dough.
Instead, I used peanut butter chips and they gave a subtle peanut butter flavor, yet not so much that the vanilla flavor was lost.
I was going to add white chocolate chips, too, but I know not everyone is as crazy about white chocolate as I am, so I refrained.
I did add something to them that I almost never bake with. Good ole Crisco.
I read cookie making guides and online websites devoted to The Perfect Cookie and never tire of the epic food science quest in finding what makes cookies puffy, flat, chewy, crispy, you name it.
Many people swear by some lard to keep things moist and puffy. Scientifically, that makes sense.
And boy, puffy is what happened.
That would be pufffffyyyy.
Not using butter is a smidge of a sacrifice in the flavor department because there is nothing that can replace the flavor of butter in baking. However, in terms of puffiness, chewiness, and softness, these babies were perfectly puffalicious and right on point.
Ingredients in Peanut Butter Chip Cookies
You need very few ingredients to make cookies with peanut butter chips. Here’s the ingredient list:
- Vegetable shortening
- Granulated sugar
- Light brown sugar
- Egg
- Vanilla extract
- Cinnamon
- Salt
- Baking soda
- All-purpose flour
- Peanut butter chips
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Peanut Butter Chip Cookies
This peanut butter chip cookie recipe is one of my easiest yet! Here’s an overview of how the recipe is made:
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together the shortening, sugars, egg, water, and vanilla.
- Add the cinnamon, salt, baking soda, flour and mix until just combined. Fold in peanut butter chips by hand.
- Cover and refrigerate dough for 30 minutes, or freeze for 15 if you’re rushed.
- Using a cookie scoop, form 1-inch balls and place on parchment paper-lined cookie sheets. Bake until barely brown. Remove cookies from oven when they look slightly under-baked.
- Allow cookies to cool and firm up on cookie sheets for at least 5 minutes before moving to cooling racks.
Can I Use Coconut Oil Instead of Shortening?
A few readers have suggested using coconut oil in place of the Crisco. In theory, that’s a good idea. However, coconut oil melts when warm, which will result in thin cookies.
However, if you’d looking for a coconut oil cookie recipe, try these coconut oil chocolate chip cookies. Just sub peanut butter chips for the chocolate chips!
Can I Use Butter Instead of Shortening?
Go for it! Make sure your butter is at room temperature and isn’t melted. Just note that your cookies won’t turn out quite as puffy as mine.
Tips for the Best Peanut Butter Chip Cookies
I like vanilla-flavored foods. Actually, I am passionately in love with vanilla-flavored most anything, and I usually use twice the recommended amount of vanilla extract in any recipe.
The way I wrote this peanut butter chip cookie recipe, you don’t need to do that, but if you’re really wanting to go nuts with vanilla flavor because you’re obsessed like I am, you could possibly add one more teaspoon or perhaps some vanilla bean paste to knock your vanilla socks right off.
Also note that instead of peanut butter chips, you could use any baking chip you’d like. Butterscotch, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, you name it.
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Puffy Peanut Butter Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup Crisco, or vegetable shortening
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ¼ cup light brown sugar, packed
- 1 large egg
- 1 tablespoon water
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup peanut butter chips, or butterscotch, white chocolate, chocolate chips if preferred
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F and line two cookie sheets with Silpat liners, parchment paper, or spray with cooking spray.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together Crisco, sugars, egg, water, and vanilla, until batter is creamy.
- Add the cinnamon, salt, baking soda, flour and mix until just combined.
- Fold in peanut butter chips by hand.
- Cover and refrigerate dough for 30 minutes, or freeze for 15 if you’re rushed. Do not skip chilling the dough if you want puffy cookies because cold dough results in puffier cookies.
- Using a cookie scoop, form 1-inch balls (or roll balls by hand) and place on prepared cookie sheets, allowing for adequate spacing (these cookies do not spread much, but like all cookies, they spread some; and the colder the dough, the less they will spread).
- Bake for 8-10 minutes or until barely brown. Remove cookies from oven when they look slightly under-baked and allow cookies to cool and firm up on cookie sheets for at least 5 minutes before moving to cooling racks.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies — These peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are hands down the best peanut butter cookies I’ve ever made. Know that I don’t say that lightly! They’re melt-in-your mouth soft and chewy, and extremely moist!
Soft Peanut Butter Chip Sugar Cookies with Peanut Butter Frosting — Similar to Lofthouse Soft-Frosted Sugar Cookies, but these are for peanut butter fans! I added peanut butter and frosted them with peanut butter buttercream.
Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Chip Cookies – Super soft, perfectly chewy, BROWNED BUTTER cookies that are LOADED with two kinds of chips!! An EASY one-bowl, no-mixer recipe for irresistibly DELISH cookies!!
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In my opinion these cookies are only so-so. I would like to state right off the bat that the recipe itself is fine. The only tweak I made (I know recipe writers *love* hearing that) is that I measure my vanilla with my heart, so I probably put much more in than was actually called for. But anyway, texture wise the cookies turned out BEAUTIFULLY. They are fluffy as clouds and I absolutely love that. I’m a soft cookie girl so this was perfect for me. The problem for me was the flavour of the cookie itself. There really wasn’t any. Little cinnamon-y, little vanilla-y, but otherwise not much to it. No depth of flavour, if you will. I assume this is due to the lack of butter. I’ve never used the butter flavoured Crisco; I only have the plain stuff on hand. I do wonder if it would help.
To be perfectly honest, though, the texture of these cookies is SO GOOD, that I’m planning on getting some butter Crisco and trying again.
This has been my go-to cookie recipe for super soft, fluffy cloud cookies. The flavors as written are incredibly subtle, they’re not bold. Post Covid, my taste buds aren’t as reactive as they used to be, so I do sub butter crisco, I also measure vanilla with my heart, cinnamon is a scoop, not a leveled scoop, I use sea salt, as it tends to be a bit more salt depth, I guess? & I usually do a cup of chips which is somewhat close to half a bag. The rest I follow to the letter & I’ve had nothing but positive feedback from those who get them as gifts. Try the butter crisco for sure if you’re like me in the flavor department. These cookies are the absolute best!!
Thanks for the 5 star review, Chellie, and I’m glad these are your go-to cookies when you want a super soft fluffy cloud cookie and that you get positive feedback on these!
Delicious. Didn’t have enough peanut butter chips so I used seasalt caramel chips added chopped pecans
Thanks for the 5 star review, Sheri, and I’m glad you made up the difference with caramel chips and chopped pecans – sounds lovely!
It looks very tasty!