Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

These Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies are fun and easy to make. They are stuffed with a disc of peanut butter. These Peanut Butter chocolate chip cookies are bakery style size, and are the perfect peanut butter cookie!

Hi hi! Happy Saturday! I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a struggle to get back into the swing of things after the New Year. I picked up a super cute case of bronchitis, so it’s been a bit of a mission to get back into something that resembles regular life and routine (whatever that is). I have to remind myself that this happens every January, and it will soon pass!

I wanted to start off this year with a couple of jazzed up simple recipes, and what better place to start than with these Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies? These guys are massive, super easy to make, and the cookies don’t require any chilling, meaning that you can have these ready to eat ASAP.

Before we get into it, I want to tell you about the peanut butter that I stuffed these bad boys with. Fix and Fogg is a small New Zealand company who makes kickass peanut butter. They are based in Wellington, the city that I went to university in (and the city we are hoping to live in when we eventually move home), and operate out of a tiny little facility down a side alley in downtown Wellington, where they create the most incredible nut butters. I used to stock up every time that I was home, but I am SO, so excited that we can finally get them here in the states too! Their crunchy peanut butter is a toast time staple around here, but they also make all kinds of incredible flavoured nut butters - there’s a coffee maple, a fruit toast, a honey one, one called ‘smoke and fire’ which is spicy and smoky, and one of my favourites - their dark chocolate peanut butter. The dark chocolate PB is made with 62% dark chocolate, and it works so well in everything, including as the stuffing for these Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I took my regular cookie recipe and tweaked it a little - upping the muscovado sugar content for some more caramel notes, and then increasing the flour and leavening and decreasing the butter content just a touch to give a more sturdy cookie that would hold its shape wrapped around a disc of dark chocolate peanut butter. I then went full nerd on the process, testing chill times and baking temperatures to work out what worked best in terms of texture and keeping the peanut butter intact. Surprisingly, chill times didn’t make a difference, but the bake temperature made a significant difference in how much the peanut butter spread. Upping the bake temperature to 375°f (190°c) instead of the usual 350°f (190°c) meant that the cookie baked a little quicker, minimising the spread of the filling in the centre. So here we have it - giant peanut butter filled cookies, which require zero chill time. Everyone wins.

A few wee tips:

• I used a bar of chocolate for these cookies - I love how the uneven edges give texture within the cookie. Chopped wafers will work too.
• I worked out a new to me way of adding additional chocolate onto the top (which is an optional step but gives you epic chocolate puddles). You flatten one ball of dough, press the chocolate onto the top side, then continue as usual and roll it into a ball, which then gives you even chocolate distribution as the cookie bakes. This is optional - I like to chop up a little extra chocolate and keep it in a bowl next to me to do this step while I am assembling. I am a sucker for a good chocolate puddle.
• I found that the best way to get the peanut butter inside the cookie was to plop it out onto a pan lined with baking paper, then freeze until solid, then sandwich between two pieces of cookie dough, forming a seal around the outside, and then shaping into a ball.
• A cookie scoop is the best way to evenly portion your dough. I have a bunch but the one I reach for the most is this 2 Tbsp one. They are cheap but make your life so much easier when it comes to getting consistently sized cookies.
• You won’t use all of the peanut butter I have called for here - you want to make 12 or 13 2 tsp sized blobs of it, which you will use to stuff the cookies. I transferred the peanut butter to a bowl first and gave it a good mix to ensure it was even in consistency.
• Store the peanut butter blobs in the freezer while you aren’t using them - I like to get the first batch on to bake and then assemble the next batch just as they are almost finished baking, then use the first baking sheet to bake off the final batch. I did this in three batches, each with four cookies per baking sheet. They are big and do spread a little - you could get away with five per sheet, just make sure that they are well spaced.
• Sometimes your cookies bake up to be not so perfectly round. While I am all about embracing cookies as they naturally are, I do like them to be perfectly round, and a little trick for this is to take a cookie cutter slightly bigger than the cookie, place it over the top and use the cutter to scoot the cookie into a round shape. It’s definitely an optional step but works extremely well!

Thank you so much to Taste of New Zealand of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise for Sponsoring this post! All opinions are my own.

Made this recipe and love it?

If you made this recipe then I would LOVE for you to leave me a review below to let me know how you liked it! Also, please make sure to tag me on Instagram if you make it!

A note on salt and oven temperature

It is important to note the type of salt that is called for in a recipe. I use Diamond Crystal salt throughout my recipes - if you use a different sort of kosher salt or regular table salt you will need to adjust accordingly as some salt is 'saltier' than others. Morton's salt is twice as salty, so you will need half the quantity. Same goes for a regular table salt. I am working to get gram measurements throughout my recipes for salt but still getting there.

All oven temperatures are conventional unless otherwise stated. If you are baking on fan / convection, you will need to adjust the temperature. An oven thermometer is a great investment to ensure that your oven is the correct temperature.

Using the double / triple function in the recipe card

You will notice that there is a '1X' '2X' '3X' button in my recipe card. This can be used for doubling or tripling a recipe. However, please note that this only doubles the ingredient quantities in the ingredients list and NOT in the method. If there are quantities or pan sizes in the method of the recipe (for example weigh out 150g brown butter), you will need to scale this number manually. It will also not change the baking time in the recipe so you will need to adjust this yourself too. It is always a good idea to read through a recipe fully before doubling it just to check this. If you would like to scale this recipe or convert for another pan size, use my calculator!

Tools and equipment

For a list of my go-to tools and equipment, I have a post you can refer to here.

Why is this recipe in grams?

I post my recipes in grams as it is the most accurate way to bake. Cups are not only inaccurate but they vary in volume worldwide. There is no way for me to provide one cup measure that works for everyone. However, posting in weight fixes this issue. If you would like the recipe in cups you are welcome to convert it yourself via google, but please do not ask me to do it for you as I am not comfortable providing a recipe using a method that I have not tested. Baking with a scale is easy, accurate, and also makes cleanup super simple. Here is the scale that I use if you would like a recommendation! Here's to accurate baking!

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