These peanut butter filled brownie cookies are soft and fudge-like with a creamy peanut butter ripple swirled throughout. The brownie dough uses melted chocolate AND cocoa powder for extra chocolate flavor and the peanut butter filling requires just 2 ingredients. Warning: these are quite indulgent!
Sometimes you just need a cookie. Last month it was my mission to bake some sort of stuffed peanut butter/chocolate cookie creation. I have recipes for both peanut butter swirl brownies and peanut butter stuffed brownies, brownie cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, a recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, (and pb cup stuffed chocolate cookies in my cookbook) and questioned if this was really even necessary…
But then I came to my senses because (hello!?) a cookie is always necessary. The test batches garnered rave reviews, so I knew this recipe had to be published ASAP.
These Peanut Butter Filled Brownie Cookies Are:
- Sweet and chewy like a brownie
- Shiny and crackly on top
- Unapologetically rich and indulgent
- Filled and marbled with a soft peanut butter filling like the inside of peanut butter balls and peanut butter Easter eggs (so good!!)
The full printable recipe is below, but let me point out some things to know before you get started.
Peanut Butter Filling
The first thing you’re going to do is make the peanut butter filling using equal parts confectioners’ sugar and peanut butter. Stir them together (no need for a mixer) until combined and then roll into teaspoon-size balls as best you can. Like the filling from these cream cheese red velvet cookies (what a mouthful), the peanut butter filling must be extremely cold. Chill the peanut butter filling in the freezer for at least 1 hour as you make and chill the cookie dough.
- Can I use natural peanut butter? Yes. It doesn’t spread as much in the oven, so the cookies with natural peanut butter were a bit more lumpy, but still tasted great! I used creamy unsalted natural peanut butter that had been in the fridge, and it took a little bit more arm muscle and time to stir the confectioners’ sugar into it (compared with the conventional peanut butter), but it did smooth out—just keep at it.
- Can I use a peanut butter alternative? Yes. For nut-free alternatives, you can use Biscoff cookie butter or sunflower seed butter spread. My team and I have not tested this recipe with almond butter, but I don’t see any issue using that instead.
Brownie Cookie Dough Ingredients
Now that the peanut butter balls are in the freezer, you can start the brownie cookie dough. Have you ever made my brownie cookies before? They’re a hit whenever I make them and you might love them even more marbled with peanut butter. A few key ingredients you need include cocoa powder, brown & white sugars, eggs, room temperature butter, flour, espresso powder, and chocolate.
Espresso powder is optional for a deeper chocolate flavor. If you don’t have it, just skip it.
Success Tip: Best Chocolate to Use
Since most of the cookie’s chocolate flavor comes from melted chocolate, do not cut corners. Use pure chocolate baking bars such as Ghirardelli (not affiliated, just love their chocolate). You can find them right next to the chocolate chips in the baking aisle. They’re typically sold in 4 ounce bars and you need 8 ounces for this recipe.
- I use and recommend semi-sweet chocolate, but you can use bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate for a much darker flavor. In the pictured cookies, I used 4 ounces semi-sweet and 4 ounces bittersweet.
The cookie dough is practically brownie batter, so it needs to chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour before you can shape it with the peanut butter filling. Very sticky before chilling:
Look how much it solidifies after 1 hour in the refrigerator. This is exactly what you want:
Let’s Shape These Peanut Butter Filled Brownie Cookies
The process starts similar to how we shape Nutella crinkle cookies. Using a Tablespoon measuring spoon, scoop out a heaping mound of the brownie cookie dough. It will be pretty hard after chilling, but will soften up in your hands as you roll it. (I don’t recommend using a cookie scoop for this dough because the dough is too hard and sticky. I tried it and my cookie scoop went on strike.) Now the exact marbling/shaping process:
- Roll the dough in your hands to make a ball and then press your thumb into the ball as if you were making a thumbprint cookie.
- Press a peanut butter ball into the indentation and break off a small piece of the brownie dough.
- Smush (yes, that’s the technical term) the piece of brownie cookie dough you’d taken away back on top of the peanut butter filling.
- Mold it all together as you reroll it into a ball. It will look a little marbled.
YOUR HANDS WILL GET MESSY in this process, fair warning.
Every cookie will look different, which only adds to their alluring charm. And by the way, you could totally use these cookies for cookie ice cream sandwiches!
3 Final Success Tips
- Don’t overthink the shaping step. The marbling/swirling doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it’s fun that every single cookie looks different!
- Shape only a few at a time. The peanut butter filling softens up extremely quickly after you take it out of the freezer, and quickly becomes softer than the brownie cookie dough. I recommend taking about 6 peanut butter balls out of the freezer at a time, leaving the rest in the freezer while you’re shaping the first bunch.
- Clean-ish hands. Wipe or wash your hands clean after you shape a few cookies. Once your hands are really messy, the dough becomes unworkable. I usually shape 6, freshen up my hands, shape another 6, etc.
See Your Peanut Butter Filled Brownie Cookies!
Many readers tried this recipe as part of a baking challenge! Feel free to email or share your recipe photos with us on social media. 🙂
Print
Peanut Butter Filled Brownie Cookies
- Prep Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes (includes chilling)
- Cook Time: 13 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours
- Yield: 24 cookies
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
Take rich and chewy brownie cookies to the next level with a creamy peanut butter swirl! Both the peanut butter filling and cookie dough must chill before shaping. Review shaping success tips above the recipe.
Ingredients
Peanut Butter Filling
- 1/2 cup (125g) creamy peanut butter (see Note)
- 1/2 cup (60g) confectioners’ sugar
Cookie Dough
- 8 ounces (226g) semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (2 standard 4-ounce bars of baking chocolate)
- 3/4 cup (94g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1/4 cup (21g) natural unsweetened or dutch-process cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon espresso powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 5 Tablespoons (71g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 3/4 cup (150g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Make the peanut butter filling: In a small bowl, mix the peanut butter and confectioners’ sugar together until combined and smooth. You can just use a spoon for this. Mixture is thick, yet soft. With a teaspoon, scoop out a spoonful of peanut butter mixture (about 6g), and roll into a ball. Place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, plate, or tray. Repeat with remaining mixture until you have 24 peanut butter balls. Loosely cover and freeze for at least 1 hour and up to 1 day. (I usually just freeze them for a little over 1 hour, which is the amount of time it takes to make and chill the brownie cookie dough.)
- Make the brownie cookie dough: Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or use the microwave. Microwave in 20-second increments, stirring after each until completely melted. Set aside to slightly cool.
- Meanwhile, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking powder, and salt together. Set aside. In a large bowl using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together on medium-high speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla extract, and beat on high speed for 2 full minutes. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl, then beat on high for 1 more minute. Pour in the slightly cooled melted chocolate and mix on medium-high speed for 2 full minutes. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and beat on low speed until combined.
- Cover and chill the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour. If chilling for longer, allow the cookie dough to sit at room temperature for 10-15 minutes before rolling and shaping in step 6.
- After chilling, preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
- Shape the cookies: The peanut butter filling softens up extremely quickly after you take it out of the freezer. I recommend taking about 6 peanut butter balls out of the freezer at a time, leaving the rest in the freezer while you’re shaping the first bunch. Using a sturdy tablespoon, scoop out a heaping spoonful of the cookie dough and roll into a ball, about 1.5 Tablespoons/30g/1 ounce of dough each. The dough will be quite stiff. Make an indentation with your thumb, and place a frozen peanut butter ball in the indentation. Pinch off a piece of the brownie cookie dough and press it on top of the peanut butter filling, and then roll the whole thing together into a smooth ball. Feel free to pull off pieces of brownie dough to expose more peanut butter and then re-roll together; peanut butter can also be hidden inside the cookie dough if you don’t want a marbled look. Repeat with remaining cookie dough and peanut butter balls. (Warning: your hands get messy in this step!)
- Place dough balls 3 inches apart on the baking sheets and bake for 12-13 minutes or until the edges appear set. The centers will be quite soft, but will set up as the cookies cool.
- Remove from the oven and allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Cookies won’t spread as much if dough balls were frozen, so about halfway through bake-time, gently press down on the baking cookies with a spoon to help get them to spread. Learn some of my best practices for How to Freeze Cookie Dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowl | Double Boiler | Whisk | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Cooling Rack
- Peanut Butter: At the time of publication, there is a recall on Jif peanut butters. Please consider researching the recall information and use another brand of peanut butter in this recipe. We tested it with Skippy Creamy, Justin’s Natural Creamy, and Wegmans brand Natural Creamy. If using natural and the oil has separated to the top of the jar, make sure you stir it well before measuring. Room temperature peanut butter is easiest to mix. I do not recommend crunchy peanut butter because it doesn’t mix very easily with the confectioners’ sugar.
- Peanut Butter Alternatives: For a nut-free alternative, you can use Biscoff cookie butter or sunflower seed butter spread. My team and I have not tested this recipe with almond butter, but I don’t see any issue using that instead!
- Chocolate: Use pure chocolate baking bars. You can find them right next to the chocolate chips in the baking aisle. They are sold in 4 ounce bars, so you’ll need 2. I use and recommend semi-sweet chocolate, but you can use bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate (or a combination of any) for a darker chocolate flavor.
- Espresso Powder: Espresso powder deepens the chocolate flavor. You can skip it or use 2 teaspoons of instant coffee powder instead.
I loved loved loved these!! One of my favorite recipes yet! Everyone who had them raved about them.
Hi Sally,
Can you add chocolate chips to the recipe?
Hi Laura! It may be a little tricky to swirl the peanut butter filling into the dough if it has chocolate chips in it, but let us know if you try! You may also love these Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl Cookies with chocolate chips.
This recipe is so good! easy to do as well. Everyone loved it.
Do you like chocolate? Peanut butter? Than this recipe is for you! I’ve made them 3 different times and they are always a huge hit! I did try substituting 1 for 1 gluten flour one time as my sister in law has gluten allergies. She said they turned out better than most gluten free cookies. Next time I make them I will try a dark chocolate blend.
I made this recipe following the directions exactly, and they turned out beautifully! They are so beautiful, rich, and delicious! I read the reviews, and I had a similar experience—my brownie cookie dough was softer and my peanut butter pieces were frozen solid. I ripped the peanut butter pieces apart and mixed them into each brownie cookie dough ball—it worked perfectly. Our whole family loved them. Thanks for the recipe!
I’ve had success with recipes from this site before. Unfortunately, not this one. I followed everything in the directions down to the timing of mixing and my “dough” came out like brownie batter. Even almost totally frozen it became impossibly soft and I found that my peanut butter mixture stayed quite firm, so when baking I had cookies that spread some and the peanut butter that spread very little. I had better luck breaking up the peanut butter balls and rolling it into the “dough” that way as far as marbling went – that solved that problem but even still, the cookies did not spread as a cookie should and looked more like baked mounds. The taste was good enough but probably won’t make again.
While I am not a huge fan of chocolate, I made these for my son and husband. My husband has declared these to be his favorite cookie!
I’m not sure what the other bakers did that I didn’t do. I followed the recipe exactly and measure my ingredients by weight. This dough is the WORST dough I’ve ever worked with. Beyond sticky at any temperature, and certainly doesn’t ‘marble’ with the peanut butter. This was so frustrating I just gave up. Won’t make these again.
Great recipe — smelled so good we ate it before it got completed cool. Husband loved them — since they were for his birthday I was very happy. Don’t know what the complaints were about? I only had 4 oz semi sweet so added 2 oz unsweetened chocolate and it was perfect. Easy thought required a lot of mixing. Perfectly formed once cold. I made part of the cookies up as was late when finished (had made a lot of other stuff today, bread and pretzel bites). What a great way to end the day!
Delicious!! I accidentally covered the entire peanut butter ball with cookie dough so mine didn’t have that peak-a-boo affect of the peanut butter showing but the “ surprise “ bite of peanut butter in the center was yummy! Huge hit! Another wonderful recipe where wearing disposable food prep gloves keeps things tidy! Thank you!
A great delicious twist on brownies, thank you!
These cookies are amazing! Really love the flavor, texture and smell of these cookies. Everybody enjoyed them specially my kids. I love your recipes! Thank you so much!
Cookies are delicious. Time consuming and the dough was difficult to work with. I actually had to clean my hands after making two. I baked one pan at a time and kept the other half of the dough in the refrigerator until the first pan was done. They did come out good.
The calculations are wrong for the peanut butter mix. If you have 125g peanut butter and 60g of confectioner sugar that’s 185g. If you make 24 x 6g balls that’s only 144g. So the balls need to be closer to 8g to use all the mix. I realize this is minor but if you’re going to give accurate measurements, may as well make them right!
Otherwise delicious!
Hi Sally, these are amazing! I noticed in your video you used a teaspoon measuring spoon to scoop out the peanut butter for the balls. They looked so sturdy, can you let me know where I can get them? My spoons are very flimsy and can’t use to scoop things out to measure, they just bend. Thank you and keep the wonderful recipes coming!!
Hi Nancy, Sally has 2 sets of these great measuring spoons.
Baked my cookies for 11 minutes and they turned out perfectly. Very delicious and indulgent cookies 🙂
Did this for the June challenge for one of my clients and it was a hit!
Wow! These cookies are amazing, totally worth the extra bit of time and effort. My daughter told me they are the best cookies I have ever made, and I may have to agree. They will definitely be on my cookie tray this Christmas. And I will most certainly be making them again before that.
Success first try! Absolutely delicious. Had a light crunch to the bite but plenty soft inside. Definitely tasted like a brownie but lighter, and the peanut butter ratio was perfect.
I made these yesterday for my daughter’s birthday. Everyone loved them. My daughter said they are her new favorite.
The brownie cookie itself was delicious and the peanut butter always makes pretty much anything a win.
Another good recipe that was easy to follow.
I just wanted to add to my previous comment. We discovered that these cookies were amazing with vanilla ice cream sandwiched in between two halves (for a 1 cookie sandwich) or two whole cookies for an ultimate ice cream sandwich. I’m going to try making ice cream sandwiches from the rest and freezing them for ready-made ice cream sandwiches to see how that works. Just imagine if they were filled with chocolate-peanut butter ice cream!
So good as cookie ice cream sandwiches, yes!
These cookies are such a fun, special treat. I love the brownie texture and the creaminess of the filling. I had success using gluten-free flour. Thank you for another wonderful recipe!
This is so tasty! Disappearing fast!
Plan to save this one for our friends who love to enjoy a peanut butter-chocolate treat with peanut butter potter beers. This is sure to be a hit many times over! Thank you.
This recipe came together quite easily and the cookies were absolutely delicious. For the melted chocolate I used a 4 oz unsweetened baking bar of chocolate and 4 oz dark chocolate chips and it turned out great. Will make again!
Peanut Butter and Chocolate…. yum! I got 10 cookies at 30 g. each out of 1/2 the recipe.
Loved this recipe! I’m already a huge fan of Sally’s brownie cookies, so the peanut butter was an exciting addition. Note: I used crunchy peanut butter (I read Sally’s note after I bought the goods) but it combined easily with the powdered sugar. It was natural peanut butter so maybe that’s why it was easier? I also let the peanut butter and cookie dough get a little warmer than suggested, but it made it easier to marble.
After reading other reviews (and making peanut butter filled cookies before), I decided to make 1 1/2 of the cookie batter to use all of the filling. I did 1/4 c peanut butter and 1/4 c cookie butter (separately and with equal parts confectioners sugar – which I sifted to remove lumps). The cookie butter froze much harder than the peanut butter (due to oil content?) and wouldn’t smush into the cookies. This resulted in a large lump in the cookie butter cookies (I could have let the filling soften a bit more to help with that). I did end up with a small amount of left over cookie batter, but that baked fine without the filling and tasted great too.
In the end, it all tasted amazing and while not the simplest cookie recipe I’ve made, it’s definitely worth repeating!
So delicious! A perfectly fancy cookie that is worth the extra effort. We have a saying in our house: “Sally doesn’t miss” and this recipe held true!