3-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies are an easy cookie recipe perfect for young and not-so-young alike.
These no-flour cookies are an easy gluten-free cookie but I can guarantee that won’t stop anyone from eating them.
Or dunking them.
This easy cookie recipe is naturally gluten-free.
3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies
I’m declaring this easy cookie recipe to be a miracle cookie.
They are simple enough for a kid to make and truly, perfectly wonderful, all with just three ingredients!
Make this easy cookie recipe in just 20 minutes!
3-Ingredient Cookies
- Sugar
- Peanut Butter
- Egg
How to Make 3-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies
1. Start by mixing all three ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl.
- Stir until smooth.
2. Use a cookie scoop to place 1-inch balls of dough onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
3. Use a drinking glass to flatten the cookies a bit and then make a hashtag pattern with a table fork.
4. Bake at 350°F in a pre-heated oven for 12 minutes.
5. After 12 minutes, remove the cookies from the oven and allow to rest on baking sheet for at least two more minutes.
6. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely.
To Make Crispy Peanut Butter Cookies
- Follow the directions and baking times as we outline above.
To Make Soft Peanut Butter Cookies
- Reduce baking time to 9 or 10 minutes.
- Press them only lightly with the drinking glass, before marking them with a fork (they will be thicker).
To Make Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies
- Press them a little thinner with the drinking glass, before marking them with the fork.
An easy cookies recipe for kids!
We’ve featured our boys in some recipes for kids, in the past.
They are great cooks and bakers, and 2 of our six boys are thinking they want to go into the culinary field. No big surprise here.
This is such an easy cookies recipe for kids; it seems like a natural choice for whenever they are in the mood to bake, which is pretty often!
Teach your kids how to make cookies
Here are a few of our other favorite easy cookies recipes that our kids love:
Do your kids like to help out in the kitchen? This is a great recipe to get them started.
As with all recipes, make this peanut butter cookie recipe your own!
You can easily cut back on the sugar (maybe by half), and you’ll find they are still delicious and great for dunking.
Some fun add-ons to these easy Peanut Butter Cookies:
- Add some chocolate chips to the mix.
- Frost these with some decadent Nutella.
- Take a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and make a sandwich cookie.
- We like to add a little vanilla, as shown in the recipe video.
Make-ahead cookies
Keeping in line with the “3” theme going on here, you can put make these peanut butter cookies up to 3 days ahead of time and store in an airtight container until ready to dunk.
How much better can it get?
Make This Irresistible Quick Dessert
It’s not necessary to be a kid, to make these 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies.
It is not necessary to be a kid to enjoy them. How can such a cookie not be a miracle? Enjoy this one!
See all of our easy cookie recipes here.
Some of Our Most Popular Easy Cookie Recipes
f you have tried this easy peanut butter cookie recipe let us know in the comments below! You can also FOLLOW US on FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, and PINTEREST to see what we have cooking!
3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Stir the ingredients together until smooth.
- Scoop onto a parchment or silpat lined baking sheet. (Roll into 1" balls with your hands, if you do not have a scoop.)
- Press down with the back of a fork and then press again from the opposite direction, to form the criss-cross pattern on top
- Bake for 12 minutes and allow to rest on baking sheet, 1 to 2 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.
I’ve been making these fo a couple of years. Always very easy. I put thumbprint in the middle and put a little jelly in when they come out.
Mary, what a fun and delicious addition to these easy peanut butter cookies! Do you deliver?
I made these tonight and they’re a huge hit! I’ve made many peanut butter cookie recipes, these are by far the winners! I changed the recipe a little however, given that many people said they were sweet enough.
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of flour
Thank you for the fantastic recipe.
Thank you for the fantastic comments and feedback! I love your incorporation of brown sugar; a perfect match for this easy peanut butter recipe.
I just tried it. Absolutely Amazing!!! Thank you❤
We’re so happy that you loved this easy peanut butter cookie recipe. Thank for the feedback and thank you for reading Platter Talk!
OMG…. these are SO incredibly easy, and aaaabsolutely delicious!! I doubled the recipe, but only used 1/3 cup sugar, total. And that was more than sufficient! *2 eggs, 2 cups PB, 1/3C sugar*… also decided to add dark chocolate chunks to the batter… WOW!! I’ve also added Nutella in the bbn past, drizzled on top. It’s a hit EVERY time!!!
Thanks for the great comments, Vanessa! We love the idea of Nutella in this easy peanut butter cookie recipe!
Sounds so good. Thank you.
Oh my gosh!!! I just made these and they are amazing! Mine came out a little flatter and chewy with crispy edges but I love them. And so easy!
Catherine, thanks for the comments and we are thrilled to hear that you enjoyed this easy recipe for peanut butter cookies! Sounds like they turned out great!
I commented on these when I made them in April. Easy recipe and tastes great. My son was over and craving something sweet like a cookie. I suggested these and once he checked the traffic for him to go home, he decided he would wait for the cookies. He, my husband and my daughter-in-law just consumed 12 cookies between the 3 of them! This time I added mini chocolate chips to 1/2 the batter. Thanks for a great recipe.
Awesome additions, Margaret; chocolate chips sound amazing with these cookies!
I started to make these cookies, I added an egg and a cup of sugar, then I l left it like that overnight. The egg whites and the sugar hardened, so I had to heat it up. I heated it up too much and the sugar boiled up and KABOOM, it exploded. I added the peanut butter and mixed it up, but it didn’t look right so I added chocolate chips. The chocolate melted in and I tasted a bit of the batter and it was AMAZING! I’m letting it cool a bit right now before I put it in the oven. I can’t wait for the results!
😆 😆 too funny. Something simple, so complicated
I just love how simple these are to make and I’ve been craving these for some time now. I think I will whip up a batch this evening!
I used to make these cookies years ago! I completely forgot about them. My kids loved them and I know the grandsons would too. Thank you for reminding me about them. I can’t wait to make them.
This 🍪 are so easy ti make and delicious!
Am not a big fan of PB…but oh my this cookies!!
Love’em😊
The only thing i change was Instead of one whole cup of sugar i did 1/4 of brown and 1/4 regular sugar with some choco chips
I will definitely make again
Thanks!
I’ve made so many different types of peanut butter cookies but I tell you this classic version is still the top three for me. Just three ingredients! Can’t beat it.
Everything about this cookie is amazing! These looks so good, and I love how very easy they are.
SO easy, so delicious! I love that these are gluten free and low in carbs too!
I just love easy recipes like this one and peanut butter is a favorite cookie for both my sons they will love them!
I’ve been making these for the last three years, since finding them on a different blog in 2015. They’re SOOOO good, and I love how very easy they are. I share them with my minister’s family, and four of his eight (all bio) children are gluten intolerant, so this recipe is perfect for all of us to enjoy without having to get expensive GF flour. His wife is terribly allergic to MSG, too, so having something so simple that his family can see is safe for them means a lot to all of us…as well as letting his 11 year old daughter make them (she loves to bake!)
Thanks for the great feedback, Joyce! We love this easy cookie recipe as well!
I found this recipe on Pinterest. I had all the ingredients already on hand, so easy to make and mist importantly, Delicious!
Wonderful, Eldaka!!!
I must’ve done something seriously wrong. I doubled the recipe so it ended up being 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of peanut butter, two eggs. It became a very hard greasy mess that did not bake well at all. Did I miss something in the recipe?
Hi Kate, Thanks for the question. I’ve never made a double batch of this 3 ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe but I can’t imagine what went wrong with your version. Since there are only 3 ingredients, I’m thinking it was the peanut butter that did you wrong. Both eggs and granulated sugar are pretty consistent variables, but peanut butter can vary from brand to brand and wheter it’s natural with the oil well incorporated throughout etc. If you take a look at the recipe video, you will see exactly how this simple recipe should look throught the brief preparation process. We hope you find success making these easy cookies and please let us know if and howe you resolve this issue. Thanks again for reading Platter Talk!
I have the same problem. No way can you scoop these out onto the parchment paper. More like pour them out. So what happened. And I didn’t double the recipe.
Hi Dixie, I can’t for the life of me imagine what the issue is that’s causing you to have problems with this simple recipe. I wish I could be there while you are making them. If any of our other readers have thoughts on this, please help us out here.
Low fat and/or some generic brands don’t work well in this recipe because the fat and moisture contents are not consistent. That might be the problem, especially because there are only three ingredients.