These Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies are incredibly simple to make with only 6 ingredients, and no flour or butter required! But don’t be fooled by their simplicity- this flourless peanut butter cookie recipe is a major contender for your favorite cookie recipe yet- they turn out with lightly crisp edges and soft centers. You may want to double this family favorite!
Easy (Flourless!) Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup peanut butter we recommend standard Jiff or Skippy, not natural style pb
- 3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar
- 1 large or extra large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon table salt
- optional: heaping 1/2 cup chopped chocolate or chocolate chips
- I recommend dark or semi-sweet
- optional: 1/3 cup oats
- optional: sugar for rolling
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Beat peanut butter and brown sugar until smooth. Add egg, vanilla, baking soda, and salt. Mix for about a minute. Shape into balls, and if desired roll in sugar. Flatten with a criss cross pattern with a fork, or simply flatten with the bottom of a glass. If you'd like to add Oatmeal Chocolate Chip PB Cookies, add chocolate chips and oats. Bake for 8-9 minutes, don't over-bake, and let them sit on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Makes 18-20 cookies.
These flourless peanut butter cookies are seriously the easiest, quickest cookies and I almost didn’t want to tell you guys that they were gluten free, or didn’t have any butter or flour, because I know there are people out there who will dismiss this recipe thinking of it simply as a replacement if you can’t have normal cookies. Not the case. This is actually just an amazing cookie recipe and it’s simply a fun side note that they don’t have flour or butter. As proof- I honestly make these more often than any other peanut butter cookie recipe. It’s a bonus that they’re stinking fast. It literally takes me maybe 60 seconds to mix the dough. This is one of our family favorites for our weekly Monday Night Family Nights because I always have the ingredients on hand!
Ingredients for flourless peanut butter cookies
Here we go! This is all you need, really.
Mix your dough
When your ingredients first come together, the dough is very smooth and loose. It doesn’t look thick enough to be cookie dough.
The key is to keep mixing! It will quickly come together and magically change texture- this time into kind of a crumbly texture. NOTE: The texture of this dough is different than standard cookie dough, almost oily? It feels funny but it works. Just go with it.
Optional: Add Chocolate Chips and/or oats
If you’d like to add chocolate chips, which are optional, you’d do that at this point. Again, the texture of this dough is different- the chocolate chips won’t “stick” in there as well. Just do your best to mix them in. You can also add oats in there, too!
I like to roll balls in sugar and give them a little criss cross, but you could simply put spoonfuls of dough on the sheet and flatten them a little with a bottom of a cup if you’re in a hurry.
If I add chocolate chips, I usually skip the step with rolling in sugar and criss-crossing and instead I just use a cookie scoop and then lightly flatten the dough balls with my hand or the bottom of a cup.
Bake your cookies
You want to bake them just until the edges are set, and not over bake. In my oven 8 minutes is just about perfect.
Let them cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes so they don’t fall apart on you when you transfer them, and then put them on a cooling rack.
If you put them in an airtight container, they’re great the next day, too.
And I love that the basic recipe makes a small batch, about 18 cookies with a standard size scoop. You can easily double it if you want more.
Speaking of super-easy cookie recipes, if this one sounds good, you’ll probably also love this Nutella Cookie recipe- with only FOUR ingredients!
Questions & Reviews
These turned out amazingly well! They are so good! And I like the fact that there is no added butter.
I could defiantly just eat the Peanut Butter Cookie dough sitting on the pan but I bet they taste great cooked too!
We tried these last night and they are so soft and delicious! Thanks!
I am on a very strict elimination diet and cannot have Peanut butter or sugar but I substituted with Almond butter and coconut sugar. They were AMAZING! I literally ate 10 in 2days! Yikes! They were seriously that good 🙂
Oh also added an additional egg because my almond butter is so much drier than peanut butter. No clue if that was the right thing to do, but turned out great!
Wow!!! Those were delicious! I didn’t even miss the flour! And your post came right at the perfect time because I was making dinner for a friend who can’t have gluten and I wanted to take a treat along with dinner. I can always count on you ladies!
These look so exciting! Peanut butter are my favorite cookies, and I love when things are simple! I was happy to see that brown sugar was indeed in the mix as I kept reading because I was pretty skeptical there for a second that the cookies would still be great without any sugar.
From this line, “She went on to tell me it was simply peanut butter, egg, baking soda, and a dash of vanilla.”… I wondered if the baker actually didn’t use any sugar, or was it a given so it simply wasn’t mentioned then? Just curious.
Anyway, thank you for another great recipe to try 🙂
Mine didn’t turn out either!! So disappointing…smelled great but went flat and weird…
I had the same problem as Melissa. I too am a baker & followed the recipe (doubled it & used semisweet chips). Oily dough, flat cookies that baked into one giant mass. Should I have refrigerated my dough!
My husband’s favorite cookie is peanut butter, so I decided to make these today. However, I only had 1/2 cup of Jif, so I added 1/2 cup of the Planters Nutrition peanut butter (cinnamon, raisin, granola kind) and they turned out amazing! These were just too easy to make…thanks for the recipe.
These cookies look great. Do you think you could substitute ‘brown sugar Splenda’?
I have Celiac and I love these cookies. Glad others can share the love, too!
These were so great and not bad calorie wise. The whole recipe is just a bit over 2000 calories and I made the cookies small so there were over 20 cookies. A keeper !!! Thanks
This will be a great one to take to family parties. I have a bunch of family members who have developed any possible gluten allergy out there and this one doesn’t violate one of them! Thanks!
I should also add…my dough was disgustingly oily. Like dripping. The pictures didnt look like it was supposed to be like that…. I used cheapo western family. From previous comments it doesn’t sound like that should make a difference, but maybe?
Mine didnt turn out. They are paper thin. My whole pan of cookies melted into one big blob. In a “normal” recipe I’d say it’s because I didn’t add enough flour….but in this case!? What went wrong??
thank goodness you posted this, b/c – ME TOO! Mine were chewy and didn’t hold their shape- I really am a good baker and followed this recipe exactly…????
My cookies turned out super flat. Delicious and chewy, no doubt, but much flatter than the beautiful ones in your recipe pic. I used regular Jif and an extra large egg. I can’t think what else would make the difference. Any thoughts? The whole family loved them so it was a win either way. 😉
That happened to my sister too, and I don’t know why! I can only assume that it’s the specific brand of peanut butter? Or that the dough wasn’t beaten well enough. That’s all I can think of!
Oooh, these look so good! I’ll have to make sure my parents see this too since my dad loves cookies but can’t have gluten. Thanks! 🙂
McCall, Idaho is one of our favorite destinations we visit every year. What bakery are these cookies at? I can’t wait to try them out too!
Amazingly easy and probably the best pb cookies I’ve ever made. Had them whipped up for a friend in about 15 minutes! Yay! Thanks for sharing the recipe!
Just made these with crunchy peanut butter…pretty sure kids aren’t getting any!
I made these tonight – love them! I used natural peanut butter and added some nutella to the mix. So yummy (and super easy to make)! Will definitely make them over and over!
Out of curiosity – why do people criss-cross peanut butter cookies, but not any other kind of cookie that I’ve seen? Also, any chance this would work with reconstituted PB2?
These are one of my favorite cookies. I found it when I was looking for a gluten free recipe for a cookies and cocoa party, and this is now my favorite peanut butter cookie, hands down.
Side question, do you know any halfway decent egg substitutes? I made chocolate chip cookies yesterday and half way through realized all the eggs had been used up for dinner the night before. I was looking for an egg substitute and tried a ground flax water mix. That was a mistake. They tasted extremely “healthy” without actually being healthier than regular cookies (except I used part whole wheat pastry flour). They. are. awful. So have you ever been in a crunch and found a successful egg substitute? I have a feeling this will probably happen again sometime.
Been there, done that!! I have a box of powdered egg replacer by Ener-G. My box (which I’ve had a while) is yellow and has an Asian look (I think?). It’s okay for those ‘in a pinch’ baking needs but not so great as scrambled eggs.
I’ve read, and intend to do but haven’t done yet, that you can dehydrate your own eggs, and grind it into a powder for use – makes good scrambled eggs, the author said. Something to do when you have an abundance of eggs, or even just to have on hand for cookie emergencies!
These look amazing! I must make them right now 🙂 and I’m totally sending my mom the link because she loves sweets but is GF and is always on the look out for treats that still taste good. Love you guys!
A couple of months ago I had to bake gluten free treats for the teachers at my daughter’s school. After consulting the internet and a friend with Celiac, I settled on cookies very similar to these. I added Reese’s Pieces to the dough and they were awesome! I was totally surprised. I thought they’d be okay and probably kind of weird but they were definitely good enough to make regularly. My family loved them!
Yum….I don’t normally like PB cookies because they are never “right”. These are amazing. And yeah. Too easy….they will be a regular in the cookie rotation!!!
I only have medium eggs right now. Should I double the amount of egg or decrease the amount of peanut butter to account for smaller eggs?
Nah, I’d just make it with one egg and see how they turn out.
I can’t wait to try these. 🙂 For others who count calories, I put the recipe into a calorie counter and it came up with 101 calories per cookie (at 20 cookies per batch). Hope that helps!
I want these right now! So perfect 🙂
Made these last night and they were great. I used some store brand peanut butter and they were delicious! So fast and easy. I’m excited to have a go to treat when my GF bestie is in town!!