Soft, gooey, irresistible homemade peanut butter cookies – baked in a muffin tin!
I’ve now decided that everything is better in a muffin tin.
Baking cookies in a muffin tin gives them an irresistible “deep dish” cookie texture you can’t get from a regular baking tray, and you can even double up on the dough if you want them to be even deeper and even more gooey and delicious.
Or press down in the centers for peanut butter cookie cups!
The idea for these muffin tin cookies came about due to pure laziness. I’d used my cookie tray for another recipe earlier in the day, and it was still sitting in the sink waiting to be washed. I knew I had two options if I wanted to make the peanut butter cookies I was suddenly craving: Stop and wash the cookie tray OR make the peanut butter cookies immediately and get creative with my choice of baking trays.
For the obvious reason that satisfying peanut butter cookie cravings shouldn’t be put on hold, I went with the second choice. I figured that baking the cookies in a muffin tin would still yield plain-old regular peanut butter cookies. But I couldn’t have been more wrong… and I am so happy I was.
When the cookies came out of the oven, they were thicker and softer than my usual peanut butter cookies, and thicker and softer cookies are always a good thing. I made two batches: one with chips and one without.
I’m sure you can guess which batch was my favorite!
Step One:
Make the dough and portion it into individual muffin tins.
Step Two:
Bake on the center rack at 350 F until soft.
Step Three:
Let cool, and devour your deep dish muffin tin peanut butter cookies, one by one!
Peanut Butter Cookies – In A Muffin Tin
Peanut Butter Cookies – Baked In A Muffin Tin!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup peanut butter OR allergy-friendly sub
- 2 tbsp applesauce
- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup unrefined sugar or xylitol
- 3 tbsp flour – spelt, oat, white, sorghum, or rice flour all work
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/8 tsp salt
- chocolate chips, optional
Instructions
*If desired, you can double the dough for deeper-dish cookies (and then press the middles in for cookie cups if you wish).
Grease or line a muffin tin. Preheat oven to 350 F. Bring peanut butter to room temperature if it isn’t already easily stir-able. Stir together first 3 ingredients. In a small dish, combine remaining ingredients, then stir all ingredients together to form a dough. If dough is too soft to form balls, freeze ten minutes or until it firms up. Using a cookie scoop, scoop balls into the prepared muffin tin. Gently press down. Bake 6 minutes – remove from the oven when still undercooked, and let sit ten additional minutes to firm up. Go around the sides with a knife to remove from the tin.
Link Of The Day:
These look delicious – I can’t wait to try them out! I love how your recipes are not only healthy, but in proportions that won’t leave a ton of cookies around for me to eat at all week long. Just enough for my family of three to munch on for two days and move on.
These look great! I agree with the above comment in that I appreciate the portions of your recipes – always just right 🙂 Who needs 2 dozen cookies when you’re just a couple?! Anyway, as these sound reminiscent of your chocolate chip peanut butter bars, I assume they should not only turn out well, but uh, need to be made soon!
These have my mouth watering! I wish work didn’t last all day…. I love that your muffin tin looks well used! Not the sparkling, pristine, almost porcelain muffin tins you often see on blogs/tv/celebrity recipes that make you wonder if the person even eats at all, and if they really know how to cook. Can’t wait to make these! Thanks Katie!
So glad you wrote this… I was actually hesitant to post the photo exactly for that reason – it isn’t perfectly spotless like you always see in professional pictures and magazines. But I am with you in that I’d rather see something real than something too staged, with fake food and bakeware that wasn’t really used for the recipe. Not to say my photoshoots aren’t ever staged, but hopefully I achieve a balance (never resorting to something like mashed potatoes for ice cream or shaving cream for whipped cream, which is often done in professional photography).
Whoa i really wanna try this :)) Im tepted to try this but replacing sugar/xylitol with rice syrup, i wonder if it will work that way…? Maybe to leave out the apple sauce? I really appreciate if you have some idea about it, but i might just try anyway and tell the results later 😀
Love your blog, has saved my ass many times ive wanted to offer people something that everybody can eat :))
Definitely report back if you experiment!
This is such a good idea. I recently had a batch of cookies that exploded and clumped into one giant cookie. So I’ll have to try cooking them in a muffin tin next time.
Haha XD ! It’s “lazy innovation” like this that makes me wonder whether it’s truly being lazy, or being genius (I always like to assume the latter). I’m running low on my stash of cookies in the freezer (a tragedy, I know), so it looks like I’ll be making a batch of these this week. Can’t wait to devour them 🙂 !
xxMeah
Can you use organic brown sugar in this recipe?
Yes!
Questioning trying this with coconut flour, make a paleo version of it in a way. I imagine I would have to adjust a liquid ingredient to balance it. Opinions on this would be a great help.
This has also inspired another idea, xylitol cookie dough pie batter in muffin tin with extra cinnamon, and put a cinnamon roll date paste in the middle of each one for cinnamon roll cookie dough muffins. If you perfect the cooking times on this please post it.
Definitely report back if you experiment 🙂
On the coconut flour experiment,
1/2 cup Almond Butter (120g)
3 tbsp applesauce (30g)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup xylitol (85g)
3 tbsp coconut flour (24-26g)
1 1/2 tsp Ener-G baking soda sub
1/8 tsp salt
Bake in preheated oven at 350F for 10-12mins then let set for another 10-20mins will be super soft and have a wonderful flavor.
Hi Katie,
We love your ideas and use a lot of them in our kitchen. Thanks for being so creative!! I just made the peanut butter cookies in the muffin tins. They taste amazing but they are falling apart and now I have a big crumbly mess which I may try to put into ice cream later, however any ideas that would help me remedy the crumbles would be appreciated!
Hmmm it’s unfortunately hard for me to try and guess when I wasn’t there, but I can try… My first thought would be that maybe you baked too long/hot? What flour did you use? I haven’t ever had a problem making them before so hope it was just a one-time fluke. I want my recipes to always work perfectly for everyone!
Mine came out really good. I used regular flour this time but have spelt flour on the list for tomorrow’s batch 😉
Hi, How did the spelt flour turn out in the cookies? Still soft? Thank you
Hey! Why in a muffin pan and not regular?
Just curious.
My actual question is whether I could use a nut/coconut flour instead of the regular flour? Thanks
You can definitely experiment, and be sure to report back if you do!