Lite Peanut Butter Puffs

These peanut butter cookies use a shortcut that actually works: yellow cake mix as the base. Four ingredients, one bowl, and you’ve got soft, puffy cookies with real peanut butter flavor.

Egg whites instead of whole eggs keep them lighter than a traditional peanut butter cookie. There’s no added butter or oil in the batter, so the only fat comes from the peanut butter itself and whatever is already in the cake mix. The texture lands somewhere between a cookie and a mini muffin top: airy, slightly chewy, not dense.

Watch the oven closely. These go from underdone to overbaked fast. Pull them when the edges just barely start to turn golden and the centers still look slightly soft. They firm up as they cool.

Pro Tips

• Drop the batter by level teaspoons, not tablespoons. These puff up more than you’d expect from a cookie dough, and oversized drops spread into each other.
• Mix at low speed for the full two minutes. The cake mix needs time to hydrate evenly with just water and no oil.
• Let cookies cool on the pan for 5 minutes before moving them. They’re fragile when hot.
• Use creamy peanut butter, not chunky. The batter is already loose and chunky peanut butter makes dropping consistent sizes harder.

Variations

• Press a chocolate kiss into the center of each cookie right after baking for a peanut butter blossom twist.
• Use chocolate cake mix instead of yellow for a chocolate-peanut butter combo.
• Roll the dough balls in granulated sugar before baking for a crinkle-top look and extra crunch on the outside.