Healthy Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe

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This healthy peanut butter cookies recipe is so tasty and easy to make by hand with just 7 ingredients.

My go-to recipe for when I’m craving a batch of warm, delicious, and slightly-healthier cookies…stat. ♡

These peanut butter cookies are always here to save the day. They’re wonderfully low fuss with just 10 minutes of prep time and only require 7 basic ingredients that are likely already hanging out in your pantry. They’re naturally gluten-free and dairy-free and made with a chewy oatmeal base. There’s no mixer or chill time required here. And even without the usual flour and butter, these peanut butter cookies are still downright delicious.

Feel free to stir some chocolate chips, nuts, or other add-ins to the dough if you’d like. And I definitely recommend a little sprinkle of flaky sea salt for a crunchy finish.

Let’s bake some cookies together!

Healthy Peanut Butter Cookie Ingredients

Here are a few notes about the ingredients you will need to make this healthy peanut butter cookies recipe:

• Natural creamy peanut butter: This recipe was developed with natural creamy peanut butter made from 100% peanuts. (The consistency of natural peanut butter varies significantly from traditional peanut butter.) As always, be sure to give your jar of natural pb a good stir before adding it to the recipe.
• Old fashioned oats: Old fashioned oats (aka “rolled” oats) will serve as the base for these cookies. If you want to make this recipe gluten-free, be sure to check labels to ensure that your oats are certified gluten-free.
• Eggs: We will use eggs to help bind all of the ingredients together.
• Brown sugar: I typically make this recipe with light brown sugar, but other forms of granulated sugar may work well too.
• Baking soda: Baking soda will serve as our leavening agent to help the cookie dough rise.
• Vanilla extract: A hint of vanilla extract brings out the best of the peanut butter flavor.
• Salt: And finally, we will use fine sea salt in the cookie dough to bring out the best of all of those flavors. Then I also highly recommend sprinkling a pinch of flaky sea salt on the cookies after baking.
• (Optional) Chocolate chips or nuts: Feel free to also add in a handful of semisweet chocolate chips or chopped nuts (such as pecans or walnuts) if you would like!

Peanut Butter Cookie Tips

Before we get to the full recipe below, here are a few additional tips to keep in mind when making these peanut butter cookies:

• Use natural peanut butter. Again, this recipe was developed using natural peanut butter, which you can either purchase at the store or make homemade. The texture/consistency will not be the same if traditional peanut butter is used.
• Save time with a cookie scoop. You’re totally welcome to just use a spoon to scoop the batter into roughly 2-tablespoon balls. But if you’d like to save time, a medium cookie scoop makes measuring and scooping the batter a breeze.
• Be sure to flatten the cookies slightly. This batter doesn’t rise and spread very much on its own, so I recommend patting the cookies down slightly before baking.

Recipe Variations

Here are a few additional variations that you are welcome to try with this recipe:

• Add cocoa powder: Add 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder to the batter if you would like to make it more chocolatey.
• Add cinnamon: Add 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon to the batter if you would like a hint of cinnamon flavor.
• Use different chocolate chips: Use any other favorite kinds of baking chips (i.e. butterscotch, white chocolate, peanut butter, Heath bar chips, M&Ms, etc) in place of semisweet chocolate chips.

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