Peanut Butter & Jelly Cookies

These cookies are the cookie-jar version of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Soft, slightly chewy peanut butter cookies that taste exactly like Skippy on Wonder Bread (in the best way possible), filled or topped with whatever jam is in your fridge.

The recipe gives you two paths. Sandwich-style with two cookies smushed around a layer of jelly, which travels well in a lunchbox. Or thumbprint-style: balls rolled in chopped peanuts, pressed with your thumb, and filled with jam after a first short bake. Both work; the thumbprint version photographs better and shows off the jewel-tone jam.

Chill the dough before shaping. The recipe calls for it and it matters: warm peanut butter dough spreads on the sheet and bakes into pancakes. Cold dough holds its shape and gives you proper round cookies.

Use a loose-set jam, not jelly that’s stiff as rubber. Strawberry, raspberry, or grape are the classic three. Apricot or fig take these into more grown-up territory if you’re serving them with coffee instead of milk.

Pro Tips

• Bake just until set, not hard. The recipe says it for a reason: overbaked peanut butter cookies turn to sand.
• For thumbprints, press the indents while the dough balls are still cold, before baking. Pressing into hot cookies causes cracking around the edges.
• Let cookies cool completely before sandwich-filling. Warm cookies plus cool jam means a slippery, sliding mess.
• Store sandwich versions in a single layer with parchment between rows. Stacked cookies smear jelly everywhere.

Variations

• Use almond butter and apricot jam for a more sophisticated sandwich-cookie flavor.
• Press a chocolate chip into the center of each thumbprint along with the jam for a chocolate-PB&J version.
• Drizzle melted chocolate over the finished sandwich cookies for a fancier finish.