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!
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 Needed
This is just a preview of ingredients and method, keep scrolling for full printable recipe.
- Creamy peanut butter – I recommend Jiff or Skippy style, not natural style peanut butter for texture purposes.
- Brown sugar
- Egg
- Vanilla extract
- Baking soda
- Table salt
- Chopped chocolate or chocolate chips – Optional.
- Oats – Optional.
- Granulated sugar – For rolling, optional.
How to Make Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
- 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!
- Shape: I like to roll balls in sugar and give them a little crisscross, but you could simply put spoonsful 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 crisscrossing 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: 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.
Storing and Other Tips
- Store finished cookies in an airtight container at room temperature and enjoy within 3-4 days for best results.
- 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! Freeze the cookies once they cool and transfer to an airtight freezer-safe container or zip-top bag. Freeze for up to 2 months. They thaw quickly at room temperature.
I have not tested this recipe with other nut butters. As long as they are the smooth consistency of Jiff or Skippy peanut butter, it would likely work. The more natural peanut butters and nut butters might be a bit more problematic and result in a flat, oily cookie. One reader in the comments says she has better luck with natural peanut butter if it’s cold from the fridge when mixing up the dough, so that may help if your alternative nut butter is a similar consistency. Several people have reported good results using almond butter.
Readers have reported that chunky peanut butter works well!
Easy (Flourless!) Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup peanut butter we recommend standard Jiff or Skippy, not natural style pb
- ¾ cup lightly packed brown sugar
- 1 large or extra large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon table salt
- ½ cup chopped chocolate or chocolate chips (dark or semi-sweet) optional
- ⅓ cup oats optional
- granulated sugar for rolling optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350℉.
- Beat peanut butter and brown sugar until smooth. Add egg, vanilla, baking soda, and salt. Mix for about a minute. Add chocolate and/or oats, if using.
- Shape into balls, and roll in sugar if desired. Flatten with a crisscross pattern with a fork, or simply flatten with the bottom of a glass.
- Bake for 8-9 minutes. Don't over-bake. Let them sit on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Makes 18-20 cookies.
Notes
- Nutrition information was calculated without the optional chocolate, oats, and granulated sugar.
- Store finished cookies in an airtight container at room temperature and enjoy within 3-4 days for best results.
- Cooled cookies can be frozen, transferred to an airtight, freezer-safe container or zip-top bag, and frozen for up to two months. They thaw quickly on the countertop.
Questions & Reviews
I have made these cookies twice and the first time they turned out perfectly! The second time they were like some of the other comments- oily dough and spread thin when I cooked them. I used natural pb both times but the difference was the first time it had been refrigerated and the second time it was right out of the pantry. Hope that helps people that have had trouble.
My daughter and I made these tonight and they are delicious! Thanks for sharing the recipe!
Just came across this recipe and WOW! So good. I was a bit worried because I’ve made peanut butter cookies before and they were dry. I assume it’s because of the flour. These melt in my mouth and I love them. I can’t wait to make again. I think next time, I’ll skip the salt. Mine were a bit salty and I think it’s because of the peanut butter. To minimize the salt taste, skipping the salt might help.
I just made these and I have never tasted a better cookie!
I found a peanut butter at Aldi’s that has Flaxseed and Whole Chia in it and the taste is just amazing. Thank you!
These cookies are fabulous. I changed the recipe to accommodate my family. Substituted brown sugar for 1/2 cup almond flour and 1/4 cup rice syrup and added an extra egg and dark chocolate chips. The dough was sticky, but the cookies baked into beautiful, moist, cracked top cookies. Delicious!
This is the third peanut butter recipe I tried. Finally a winner! However the cookies tasted like an overdose of baking soda. Well I did some investigating and it related to the salt. Yes. The. Salt. The Diamond Crystal Ionized Salt i used contains sodium bicarbonate. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. So using that type of salt and the baking soda caused the off taste. The Morton Ionized salt, i could have used, DOES NOT CONTAIN sodium bicarbonate. Lessons learned. Hope this will keep others from making the same mistake. Happy baking.
I might like the dough more than the actual cookie. They’re BOTH hitting the spot this windy, cold day.
Hello,
These cookies sound delicious!! Can you make them with organic palm sugar instead of brown sugar?
Sincerely,
Kim Rosch
You can certainly try!
These cookies are our absolute favorites at my house! My husband and myself always make these every Sunday to have throughout the week as snacks! I Lovveeeee how minimalistic they are and I even cut back the brown sugar to 1/2cup and they still are just as fabulous. I was wondering though, has anyone tried to make these cookies with powdered peanut butter in order to cut the fat? I have just recently purchased powder PB for the first time and am excited to give it a whirl! ???
I don’t think that will work because you would then have close to zero fat in the recipe. But you can certainly try it!
Saw these this morning and made them immediately! I wanted to make the carmelitas, but that needed a run to the store, but this was on hand. 😉 Mostly, as I was out of brown sugar *gasp*, so I subbed white sugar with molasses, and all we had was Skippy whipped PB. It worked wonderfully! I used the leftover ‘brown sugar’ to roll the dough balls in. They were flat, but it was my own fault as I waited a minute too long to take them out…right before I did they were plump. Still soft, still tasty.
Has anyone tried to make these ahead of time and freeze them? Are they still ok after thawing? I need to bake these a week before a birthday do to a crazy busy week. Whenever I’ve made them prior, they’re eaten gone before I can even consider freezing! Lol!
I’ve never frozen them, but generally speaking, cookies freeze great!
They are actually really great to put in the freezer for keeping! We often times will store ours in the freezer after baking and it makes them a nice cool treat. They do not become hard in the freezer and will thaw relatively fast (within 30min).
Thanks for the recipe. I made them for our Easter Fayre and they were very well received by all brave enough to try them. The gluten free sticker I put on them was a little scary for some but all were surprised how delicious they were and very impressed that I made a cookie without flour and butter. I mixed 1/2 cup creamy with 1/2 cup crunchy and they turned out wonderful.
TO FIX THE FLAT, Try switching out your baking soda for baking powder. Baking Soda requires an acid to even work. So it’s probably just the water in your egg white, through steam that is helping the rise in your recipe. The Chocolate is an acid and would help but it’s in chunks so maybe not in this case.
If you add a little baking powder then your baking soda would work, if it is double acting powder. 4 to 1, powder to soda.
hi,
I used the recipe to make my cookies yesterday but it turned out to be a disaster. The batter was so oily, when I was rolling it into balls it kept slipping. When I put it on my baking sheet, you could tell it was very oily. I put it in the oven for 10 mins and when I tried to take it out, it looked like it hadn’t even baked. I landed up baking it extra only to have a burnt batch. It was super disappointing 🙁
Someone please do help me correct my mistakes.
Do you think I could substitute 1 cup of honey for the brown sugar or would that be a total disaster?
I am admittedly NOT a baker, but wanted to try these when my inlaws are in town… Can I make the dough before and bake them a day or two later? Also, do I bake them on a greased sheet ( like sprayed w Pam)? Thanks for the advice!!!
This is the second recipe I tried, the first one didn’t use baking soda, brown sugar or salt, everything else was the same. First of all if you over beat the mixture it’ll get really crumbly and it will separate from the oil. How do I know?… well that’s what I did 🙁 the first time (1st recipe also), the only solution I could think at the moment was to let the mixture rest and seep all the oil and when I started to form the cookies I used a napkin to pat them dry, I didn’t want to waste the ingredients. Baked them for 12 minutes. They tasted like candy more than pb cookies, they were flat and chewy. Not what I was looking for. So I gave this no-flour cookie another try but this time I followed this recipe (using 1/2 C brown sugar because my pb has sugar in it, if you want to know I used Skippy Creamy Pb). I mixed these until the ingredients were barely incorporated. Baked them for 10 minutes and let them cool (until I could touch the pan I would say 7-8 mins). I let them cool in the cookie rack a for 5 minutes more, and OH MY GOSH when we tasted them they were really, really delicious. Soft and with the pb taste that I was looking for. I’m sorry this took so many words to explain, but I thought I could give you my 2 cents. Hope this help! Thanks for the recipe 😉
A similar recipe to this was always on the side of the peanut butter jar growing up and it’s how I’ve always made peanut butter cookies! One of my first things I baked all by myself! Now my 4 year old makes them!
Made these last night and won’t make again. As others have said, they’re very flat. Plus, mine are so soft they barely hold together when you pick them up.
Seriously delicious and super peanut-flavored with nothing to hide behind.
I had to make these cookies just to see if that was possible without flour. Made them,and can”t believe how Great they taste.I can’t thank you enough for this recipe. I am not allergic to gluten and will make these quite often.Marvelous tasting cookies. I thank every one for there honest Reviews.
Oh ho, ho!
I used natural peanut butter, cooked for 9 minutes and they came out crumbly and fell apart completely when I picked one up (fully cooled). Maybe it was the natural PB? Just thought I’d let others know. I love all things OBB 🙂
Ya, I’d skip the natural and stick with good ol’ Skippy or Jif 🙂
Made these exactly as directed and they were awesome. Which is a big thing coming from someone who doesn’t even like peanut butter in general. With the standard cookie scoop I got 17 cookies and baked them 8 minutes. I used CREAMY SKIPPY pb, a new jar. I know sometimes old pb that has been sitting in the pantry for a few months gets kind of loose and oily sometimes so I wonder if that is an issue some people have had? In any case, these worked perfectly for me.
These are delicious! I just tried them 😀 Thank you
These are awesome! I’m currently not eating any soy or milk products and have been craving sweets. These cookies hit the spot.
Just made a batch of these and they’re a winner! My family loves PB cookies and this recipe is going to be the one I reach for first from now on. Thanks so much for sharing it!
These cookies were so good! They really did melt in my mouth. I was a little skeptical since there was no flour, and the only negative was that they were a little thin, but other than that they were perfect! I bet you could substitute applesauce or banana puree for the egg to make this a vegan recipe.
I made these tonight and they were fantastic. I had some all natural peanut butter that I wanted to finish off but only had 3/4 cup so I added another quarter cup of traditional Jif peanut butter. I also only had dark brown sugar on hand. I rolled mine a bit bigger – about 3″ in and baked them a bit longer (about 12-13 min) and got 10. These were a hit for us. Perfect warm from the oven with a glass of cold milk. This is will be a great option for a quick homemade weeknight dessert. Thanks so much for sharing.
Sara,
I had the same problem as a few other people too. Flat and extremely oily. They tasted good but the oily-ness was kinda throwing me off. I used chunky peanut butter and mixed it in the Bosch mixer. Should I have used creamy and mixed it with a hand mixer instead? Would you make them again and show a picture of what the dough should look like after it has been mixed? Any help would be great! Thanks for the new recipe.