Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe with Salted Peanut Caramel - David Lebovitz (2024)

FAQs

Why are my 3 ingredient peanut butter cookies falling apart? ›

There are a few reasons why your cookies are falling apart. The wrong ratio of ingredients, such as too little sugar or peanut butter will make them fall apart. The wrong type of peanut butter may cause them to fall apart. Or using old eggs may create crumbly cookies.

The baking company shared that the reason has to do with the consistency of the dough. Because peanut butter cookie dough is dense, using a fork helps flatten it into the ideal shape and thickness, allowing it to bake evenly.

Use more granulated sugar than brown sugar.

With all of the peanut butter in this cookie dough, however, too much brown sugar made the cookies so soft that they fell apart.

The most common mistake with peanut butter cookies is using the wrong type of peanut butter. The BEST peanut butter for today's cookies is a processed creamy peanut butter, preferably Jif or Skippy.

Peanut butter cookies don't spread as they cook, so you have to flatten them before hand. This ensures that the middle will cook through before the outside burns. As for the pattern created, it actually creates slightly more surface area, so you'll get more browning at the extra edges that you create.

One reason could be that you overcooked them. Another reason could be that you didn't add enough moisture to the dough. Finally, your peanut butter cookies might be dry and crumbly if you used a natural peanut butter that doesn't have any added oil.

If you're wanting to use natural (no sugar added) peanut butter, the cookies will be less sweet and they will likely spread out more. Using natural peanut butter will change the structure and texture of the cookies. Why are my cookies dry and crumbly? This is most likely a classic case of using too much flour.

If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

Peanut butter cookie dough is denser than a lot of other cookie doughs. Putting the hash marks in the cookie dough balls actually flattens them for more even baking. Without being pressed, the cookies will not cook evenly. And nobody likes a cookie that's half burnt and half raw.

Chill your cookie dough! The dough is extremely soft due to the creamy peanut butter, eggs, and butter and if it's not cold going into the oven, the cookies will spread all over your baking sheet. I chilled this cookie dough for 24 hours and my cookies were soft, thick perfection.

What kind of peanut butter is best for baking cookies? ›

Peanut butter: Creamy peanut butter is ideal for this recipe because crunchy peanut butter creates an overly crumbly cookie. You can use processed peanut butter such as Jif or Skippy, or natural-style peanut butter.

For starters, chilling prevents cookies from spreading out too quickly once they're in the oven. If you use a higher fat butter (like Kerrygold), chilling your dough is absolutely essential. Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool.

Butter will make your cookies taste buttery; shortening will make them taste suspiciously vacant, like Katy Perry's voice post-autotune. Yes, shortening yields chewier cookies than butter does, because butter contains water and shortening doesn't.

Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

Adding a small amount of vanilla extract or cinnamon for extra flavor. Mixing in cocoa powder or cacao nibs for a chocolate peanut butter. Mixing in a small amount of coconut oil for a creamier texture and a hint of coconut flavor. Mixing in a small amount of powdered ginger or nutmeg for a spicy kick.

If you overmix the dough, the cookies will be dry and crumbly. The best way to fix this is to add more liquid to the dough. This can be done by adding milk, water, or even melted butter. You may also need to add more flour to the dough if it is too wet.

Overworking = tough, misshapen, and crumbly cookies

Overmixing your dough usually makes cookies tough and shrink into weird shapes, but it can also make them crumbly. Generally you only want to mix just until the flour disappears, and then stop mixing!

Too much flour: If you add too much flour to your cookie dough, it will be dry and crumbly. Make sure to measure your flour correctly using a kitchen scale or by spooning it into your measuring cup and then leveling it off. Not enough fat: Fat helps to bind the ingredients together and make cookies chewy.

But because natural peanut butters don't contain these stabilizers, the oil in peanuts tends to separate from the peanut solids when sitting on the shelf. The process of oils and solids separating, known as syneresis, is completely safe, but it's still really irritating.