Super Peanut Butter Cookies

A Peanut Butter Cookie With Backbone

Most peanut butter cookies are one-note: peanut butter, sugar, fat, repeat. These break the mold by folding in rolled oats and a full cup of bran, which gives the dough chew, body, and a fiber count that lifts these from candy territory into actual snack territory. The brown-sugar-and-granulated-sugar combo is the right call too. Brown sugar brings molasses depth and chewiness, granulated gives crisp edges.

The melted butter (rather than creamed) is another smart shortcut. It saves the mixing bowl and the time, and the resulting cookie spreads slightly more for those craggy, golden edges. Two teaspoons of baking soda might look like a typo but it’s not. With this much sugar and peanut butter, you need the lift.

Chef Tips

• Use natural peanut butter only if it’s well-stirred and not oil-separated. The creamy emulsified kind (like Jif or Skippy) gives more reliable cookies; natural can spread differently batch to batch.
• Drop by rounded teaspoons, not heaping. These spread, and oversized cookies bake unevenly.
• Bake until the edges are golden but the centers still look slightly underdone. They firm up as they cool.
• Press a fork crosshatch on top before baking for that classic peanut butter cookie look.
• Store in an airtight container with a slice of bread to keep them soft for days.

Variations

• Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips for a peanut butter chocolate chip version.
• Press a Hershey’s Kiss into the center of each cookie immediately after baking for a peanut butter blossom riff.
• Swap ½ cup of the flour for cocoa powder for a chocolate-peanut-butter cookie.