Easy, Soft Peanut Butter Cookies
I am no stranger to peanut butter and peanut butter cookies. I even wrote an entire cookbook, Peanut Butter Comfort, dedicated to exclusively to peanut butter recipes! I have a ton of different types of peanut butter cookies on my site. However, I’ve never made peanut butter cookies with pudding mix. It really helps keep the cookies so soft and chewy. It gives them a Softbatch-style texture. These chocolate-dipped peanut butter cookies are about 3½ inches in diameter, so they are BIG cookies! You can of course make them smaller, and adjust the baking time downward as necessary, until they’re done. I dipped these cookies in dark chocolate, and for me the combination of peanut butter plus chocolate is always a winner!
What’s Chocolate-Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies?
To make the best soft peanut butter cookies, you’ll need:
Unsalted butter Creamy peanut butter Light brown sugar Granulated sugar Instant vanilla pudding mix Large eggs Egg yolk Vanilla extract All-purpose flour Baking soda Salt Dark chocolate melting wafers, semi-sweet chocolate chips, or Pound Plus Bars
How to Make Chocolate-Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies
Cream together the butter, peanut butter, and sugars before adding the pudding mix, eggs and yolk, and vanilla. Note that you are not actually making pudding – you are just adding the dry mix to the dough, as if it were like additional flour. Use a large cookie scoop to portion the dough out into mounds, and chill the dough in the fridge for about 2 hours.
Do not skip chilling the dough because your cookies will be more prone to spreading and will bake much flatter. If you are in a huge hurry, chill in the freezer for about 30 to 45 minutes to speed the process up. Bake the cookies off for about 15 to 17 minutes. Because these are jumbo peanut butter cookies, they’ll take a bit longer to bake than smaller-sized cookies. Don’t be alarmed! Always watch your cookies and not the clock when evaluating doneness, noting that the cookies will firm up as they cool so it’s okay to pull them from the oven when they look a bit underdone. After the cookies have cooled, melt Dark Chocolate Melting Wafers or semi-sweet chocolate chips and dip the cookies halfway into the melting chocolate before setting them aside to allow the chocolate to set up.
What Kind Of Peanut Butter To Use?
I recommend an old-fashioned type of peanut butter like Jif or Skippy. While you could use peanut butter with nuts, I really am a fan of creamy peanut butter in this recipe. I haven’t tried and don’t recommend using a natural-style peanut butter because generally in baking, the type of peanut butter that separates doesn’t provide the best final treats.
What Kind Of Cookie Scoop To Use?
I recommend using a large cookie scoop. A large cookie scoop typically holds 3 tablespoons of dough. If you don’t have a large cookie scoop, you can use a tablespoon, and then roll into a ball. However, I do love using cookie scoops when making cookies because they turn out exactly uniform this way.
Do I Have To Use Pudding Mix?
The answer in a nutshell is, yes, for this recipe you do. If you want to make any of my other dozens of peanut butter cookie recipes that don’t use pudding mix, check out all the other related recipes I included below this recipe.
Can I Use Cook and Serve Pudding Mix?
No! Make sure you opt for Instant Vanilla Pudding Mix. Cook and serve will not work.
Can I Use Sugar-Free Pudding Mix?
I haven’t tried making this with sugar-free pudding mix. At times, sugar-free products can lead to inferior results as they behave differently when exposed to the heat of the oven so I would stick with regular pudding mix since I know that works for sure!
Tips for the Best Soft Peanut Butter Cookies
Pre-portioning the dough before chilling makes prep a lot easier. The dough will harden quite a bit in the fridge, which is why you don’t want to leave it in one big dough mound because it will be much harder to portion out after chilling and could damage your scoop, so portion it out before! Place it on a dinner plate to save space in your fridge. It’s okay if the dough balls are nearly touching each other. I prefer Dark Chocolate Melting Wafers to melting regular ‘ole chocolate chips because they melt so effortlessly and smoothly, but use what you have. If you happen to have a Trader Joe’s in your area, their Dark or 72% Pound Plus Chocolate Bars are also perfect because the chocolate melts so beautifully smooth! I love adding flakey sea salt to the chocolate while it’s still soft, it really helps bring out the peanut butter flavor but is completely optional.
Favorite Peanut Butter Cookie Recipes:
ALL OF MY PEANUT BUTTER COOKIE RECIPES! Tried this recipe? Leave a review! Consider leaving a 5 star rating if you’ve made and loved one of my recipes! I wrote a Peanut Butter Cookbook with 100+ recipes using Peanut Butter!
Peanut Butter Blossoms — A soft and chewy recipe for the classic cookie that stays soft! Easy, full of rich peanut butter flavor, and topped with a Kiss! Always a cookie jar or cookie exchange favorite!
Reese’s Pieces Soft Peanut Butter Cookies – Peanut butter lovers’ will go nuts for these super soft cookies loaded with Reese’s Pieces and chocolate!
The Best Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies – Soft, chewy and they’ll be your new fave PB cookies! One bowl, no mixer, no butter, naturally gluten-free! Love it when something so easy tastes so amazing!
Big Soft and Chewy Peanut Butter Crinkle Cookies – Super chewy, packed with PB flavor and just made for breaking apart at the crinkly seams!
Easy 4-Ingredient Perfect Peanut Butter Cookies – Soft, chewy, and made with an ingredient you’d never guess! It works and they’re perfect!!
Inside-Of-A-Peanut-Butter-Cup Cookies – Soft cookies that taste like the inside of peanut butter cups thanks to a special ingredient!
Soft and Chewy Triple Peanut Butter Cookies – PB is used 3 different ways in these melt-in-your mouth cookies! Batch size of just 8 cookies when you don’t ‘need’ dozens laying around!
Soft and Chewy Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies – 3 favorite cookies combined into 1 so you don’t have to choose!! Easy, no-mixer recipe, and always a hit!
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies — The BEST PB Cookies! NO Flour, NO Butter, and NO White sugar used! Soft, chewy and oozing with dark chocolate!!
