Sweet and Salty Peanut Butter Cookies

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These cookies were born from a craving - I really wanted something chewy and peanut buttery, but the more I thought about it there have been few stand out peanut butter cookies in my life. These slim beauties are a notable exception. All the other cookies I have eaten have been more or less the same. That got me thinking about cookies in general and the ones I consider to be home runs and right at the top of that list are these Salty-Sweet Butterscotch Pecan Cookies . What makes them so special? The outstanding flavor combo aside it is that little sugar salt roll around and I knew that's what my peanut butter cookies needed.

It is good to be right. These sweet salty chewy undeniably peanut buttery cookies with M&Ms thrown in are just so darn fun to eat. So much so that I even hid them from myself. True story. 

Unlike the usual recipes which seem to make a hundred or so cookies these produce 2 dozen moderately sized cookies. I used my inch cookie scoop to scoop out the dough, but you can just as easily drop it off by the spoonful or go bigger and make a dozen huge cookies with a little under a quarter cup of dough per cookie. 

This cookie dough like all others improves considerably after 'resting' in the fridge. If you are baking with kids though then cookery science doesn't really resonate so I would suggest baking off a few cookies to appease little tummies and refrigerating the rest of the dough to bake another time.

Print Recipe

5 from 2 votes

Sweet and Salty Peanut Butter Cookies

Chewy peanut butter cookies w M&Ms made extra special with a sweet-salty twist!

Author: Sarah Mir

Ingredients

Cookie Dough

• ½ cup butter
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• ¾ cup + 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 1 ⅓ cup flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ⅓ cup M&M baking bits the color doesn't 'bleed' when baking or ½ cup chocolate chips or peanut butter chips

For the topping

• 2 ½ tablespoon sugar
• 1 ¼ tsp salt

Instructions

• Mix the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside.
• Beat the butter and sugars together till fluffy and creamy. This takes me about 5 minutes.
• Add the egg, beat for a minute.
• In goes the vanilla, beat till combined.
• Add the dry ingredients and mix till just combined.
• Fold in M&Ms with a spatula.
• Let the dough rest covered in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees & line a baking sheet with parchment paper
• Mix the salt and sugar for topping in a bowl
• Make 1-inch balls of dough with a spoon or cookie scoop and drop into the bowl, roll it gently to coat and place on the baking sheet.
• Repeat till your sheet is full taking care to leave 2 inches between the cookies.
• Bake for 10-13 minutes or until the edges are golden brown but the cookie is still very soft in the middle. The cookie will still be fragile.
• Wait a few minutes and then carefully transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to cool all the way through.

Notes

Adapted from Flour by Joanne Chang