Cookies make me happy.
These homemade peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies taste like the love child of a gingerbread man and a jar of Skippy.
Please don’t try to picture that in your mind. 😕
Try one and you’ll be smiling all day. People will start to wonder about you. Why are you smiling like that? And of course you can answer:
I just like to smile.
Smiling’s my favorite.
Or you could tell them the truth: you’re smiling because you just made a batch of super-delicious chocolate peanut butter gingerbread cookies and are keeping them all for yourself. But be warned that if you go this route, they’ll expect you to share. So honesty might not be the best policy.
Initially these were to be gingerbread cookies with a hint of peanut butter. However, they turned out awesomely peanut buttery and have just an allusion of gingerbread flavor.
Peanut Butter Gingerbread Chocolate Chunk Cookies
(Peanut Butter Christmas Cookies)
- 1/2 cup peanut butter – or Sunbutter, almond butter, or cashew butter (110g)
- 1/2 tsp powdered ginger – less if you only want a slight gingerbread flavor
- 1/3 cup Sucanat – You can sub regular brown sugar; it just won’t be nearly as gingerbread-y (45g)
- pinch stevia or 1 extra tbsp of the sucanat or sugar
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 3 tbsp flour (spelt, white, ww pastry, and Bob’s gf all-purpose all work) (24g)
- tiny pinch of salt if desired (I add 1/16 tsp and use Whole Foods peanut butter, which is salted)
- 2-4 tbsp chocolate chunks, or chips, or broken-up chocolate bar
- 2 tbsp applesauce (30g)
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract (4g)
In a mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients and stir very well. Put the peanut butter in a separate bowl (and if it is from the fridge, heat it until you can more-easily stir it), then add the applesauce and vanilla to the pb bowl and stir well. Combine the two bowls, and stir to form a dough, then squish into balls with your hands. Chill the balls at least thirty minutes in the fridge or ten in the freezer, during which time you are preheating the oven to 350F. Then cook 8 minutes. They will look quite underdone when they come out, but that’s ok: let them cool and do not touch for at least another 10 minutes. For soft cookies, store in a plastic container. For crispier cookies, store in a glass container. Makes 12-16 cookies.
View Peanut Butter Cookies Nutrition Facts
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I love your cookie recipes. Keep them coming! I am going to try these today with oat flour and will report back.
For old movies I like “Christmas in Connecticut” and the hard-to-find “Junior Miss”. Both have me laughing throughout.
Perfect for my little dairy free girlie! We aren’t vegan but vegan baking works great for dairy allergies. Favourite Christmas movies – Love, Actually (although I will watch this any time I want to cry both happy and sad tears), It’s a Wonderful Life (perfect for Christmas eve) and Home Alone. I freaking love Home Alone. I always cry when Kevin’s mom shows up in the morning. Every time. Hahahaha.
Oh man! I’m starving and I have all these ingredients at home, so as soon as I get there I might just have to whip up a batch. Forget making dinner, we’ll just eat cookies.
Katie I hope you don’t get any new recipes from Buddy the Elf. Such as Maple Syrup Noodles. 😉
Hi Katie, I was wondering- You always talk about having zero sweet tooth, so I was wondering why you always use stevia in your recipes? It’s quite a bit sweeter than regular old sugar, so you might like desserts more if you skipped it. Just a thought. I know people use stevia to avoid calories from regular sugar but you’ve said that you’re actually trying to gain weight so you should try it! Cookies look great by the way- I might try them with molasses added, I know Sucanat has a molasses taste to it but I like a lot of it! Have a great day!
I agree, I have thought the same thing! 🙂 You make such a good point!
Hi Amy,
I actually don’t use stevia to avoid calories; I use it because watching sugar intake is healthy for any diet. There are a host of other problems caused by excessive sugar intake besides weight gain. But also remember that this is my job, so I’m writing these recipes for others (many of my readers have Diabetes, can’t eat sugar, or need to lose weight to get healthy) and might not necessarily use a certain variation for myself. With these cookies, for example, I’d probably just skip the stevia entirely.
Hope that clarifies!
I will definitely be trying these cookies! How could there be anything bad about gingerbread, chocolate, and peanut butter, especially when it’s one of your recipes?
As for favorite Christmas movies, the little girl in me can’t get through a Christmas season without watching the original animated version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, and all of the Frosty movies, but I’m also really fond of “The Santa Clause” and “Love, Actually”.
o my goodness- peanubutter and gingerbread are both two of my favorite things EVER- can’t wait to try these, thanks! 🙂
Peanut butter and gingerbread cookies all wrapped up into one delicious little package, with the completely necessary addition of chocolate – you are a genius, Katie! Our taste in Christmas movies is very similar – I absolutely love Elf, and my mom and I watch It’s a Wonderful Life every year (multiple times) without fail. I don’t think the critics know what they’re talking about.
love gingerbread and peanut butter this recipe looks great! My fav Christmas movie is not really a movie, but the nutcracker ballet, I look forward to seeing it every year
Fun Canadian Fact- The Santa claus with Tim Allen was filmed in a place called Oakville, Ontario Canada where I used to live 🙂
I used to live in Oakville too! now in Georgetown, ON!!