This is a bakery-style peanut butter cookie: thick, soft in the center with crisp edges, and heavy on roasted peanut flavor because it uses equal weights of peanut butter and flour, a mix of brown and white sugar, and a full teaspoon of salt to push the peanut forward. The formula below is written in grams for a 16-cookie home batch, with a scaling table that takes it to a 20-quart mixer run of about 140 cookies, which is what a bakery gets from one 5 lb tub of peanut butter, and the quantities to plan a full 35 lb pail. It works with stabilized or natural peanut butter; the notes tell you what to change for each.
Most home peanut butter cookie recipes use one cup of peanut butter to a cup and a quarter of flour, which gives a cakey, pale cookie that tastes mostly of sugar. Bakery formulas push the peanut butter up to equal weight with the flour and lean on brown sugar for moisture. The result holds its shape at a 60 g scoop, stays soft for three days in a case, and tastes like peanuts. Baking soda rather than powder gives the spread and the browning; the salt is not optional.
| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 250 g | 100% |
| Creamy peanut butter, stirred if natural | 250 g | 100% |
| Unsalted butter, softened | 115 g | 46% |
| Light brown sugar, packed | 150 g | 60% |
| Granulated sugar | 100 g | 40% |
| Whole egg | 50 g (1 large) | 20% |
| Vanilla extract | 8 g (2 tsp) | 3% |
| Baking soda | 5 g (1 tsp) | 2% |
| Fine salt | 5 g (1 tsp) | 2% |
| Granulated sugar, for rolling | 50 g | – |
Optional inclusions, folded in at the end: 150 g peanut butter chips, 150 g peanut butter mini cups, or 100 g chopped unsalted roasted peanuts.
The formula scales linearly. The table below gives a 5x batch for a 5 or 6 quart mixer, a 9x batch that uses one full 5 lb Teddie tub in a 20 quart mixer, and the multiplier to plan a 35 lb pail.
| Ingredient | 1x (16 cookies) | 5x (80) | 9x (≈140, one 5 lb tub) | Per 35 lb pail (≈1,000 cookies) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 250 g | 1.25 kg | 2.25 kg | 15.9 kg (35 lb) |
| Peanut butter | 250 g | 1.25 kg | 2.25 kg | 15.9 kg (35 lb) |
| Butter | 115 g | 575 g | 1.04 kg | 7.3 kg |
| Light brown sugar | 150 g | 750 g | 1.35 kg | 9.5 kg |
| Granulated sugar | 100 g | 500 g | 900 g | 6.4 kg |
| Whole egg | 50 g | 250 g | 450 g | 3.2 kg |
| Vanilla extract | 8 g | 40 g | 72 g | 510 g |
| Baking soda | 5 g | 25 g | 45 g | 320 g |
| Fine salt | 5 g | 25 g | 45 g | 320 g |
At 9x and above, cream the butter and sugars first for a full 4 minutes before adding the peanut butter, and add the eggs in two additions. Chill the scooped dough on sheet pans in the walk-in for at least an hour, or freeze the pucks and bake from frozen at 350°F for 14 to 16 minutes; frozen dough pucks hold for a month and let you bake to order.
With a stabilized peanut butter such as Skippy Creamy, follow the recipe as written. With a natural peanut butter such as Teddie, stir the container until it is uniform from top to bottom before weighing, and use the salted version. Natural peanut butter carries a little more free oil into the dough, so if the first tray spreads further than you like, extend the chill to an hour or add 15 g of flour to the next batch. The flavor payoff is a noticeably deeper roast. Our guide to natural vs regular peanut butter for baking goes through the reasons.
Baked cookies keep three days in a covered container or bakery case and freeze well for a month. Raw dough pucks freeze for a month and bake from frozen. Dough in bulk in the walk-in is best used within 48 hours; the baking soda begins to lose lift after that.
Usually too much flour or an overbaked tray. Weigh the flour rather than scooping it, pull the cookies while the centers still look slightly underdone, and if you use crunchy peanut butter, expect a drier cookie because the peanut pieces displace some of the paste.
Yes. Scooped dough holds two days refrigerated and a month frozen. Bake frozen pucks straight from the freezer, adding 3 minutes to the bake time.
Brown sugar, a high peanut butter ratio and a short bake. The molasses in brown sugar holds moisture, the peanut butter adds fat, and pulling the tray early keeps the center tender.
No. The crosshatch is tradition from an era when dense peanut butter dough would not spread on its own. This dough spreads enough that a light press with a glass gives a rounder, more bakery-looking cookie.
Using this formula at a 60 g scoop, a 35 lb pail yields about 1,000 cookies. The scaling table above gives the matching quantities for every other ingredient.
Every peanut butter, chip and cup used in this recipe is stocked in our Brockton warehouse and gathered in the Peanut Butter Collection, with free local delivery across Massachusetts on orders of $250 or more.
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