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If you’re looking for a peanut butter fix but don’t want to mess with flour or chilling dough, these Ultimate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookies are your new best friend. We are taking the classic 3-ingredient cookie base, just egg, sugar, and peanut butter, and stuffing it with Reese’s Pieces and chopped peanut butter cups. The result is a thick, chewy, and intensely peanutty cookie that tastes like a professional bakery treat but takes only minutes to make.
If you’ve been following along, it’s probably not a surprise to learn I could eat some version of a peanut butter dessert every single day. If you check out the peanut butter recipes on this site, you will see this is not an exaggeration: my whole family loves peanut butter cookies, cakes, cupcakes, bars…anything and everything with peanut butter. When you want cookies in a hurry, THIS is the recipe you should reach for!
The beauty of a flourless cookie is that the flavor of the peanut butter isn’t masked by flour or leavening agents. However, because there is no flour to provide structure, the egg and sugar do all the heavy lifting. This makes the type of peanut butter you use incredibly important. By using a creamy, shelf-stable brand (like Jif or Skippy), you ensure the dough is sturdy enough to hold all those heavy candy mix-ins without spreading into a oily mess on your baking sheet.
Flourless Peanut Butter Cookie Ingredients
- Shelf Stable Peanut Butter (no-stir, not natural) is a must for these cookies. Flourless recipes rely on the stabilizers and emulsifiers found in traditional peanut butter (like Jif or Skippy) to hold the dough together. Natural peanut butters that require stirring contain too much separated oil, which prevents the egg from properly binding the sugar. Using traditional PB ensures your cookies have a soft, chewy structure that won’t crumble under the weight of Reese’s Pieces.
- You need a large egg to bind your dough. The yolk adds the necessary fat for richness and the egg white adds structure and stability to cookies.
- You can use granulated sugar, brown sugar, or a combination for these cookies. You want a total of 1 cup sugar. I often do all granulated or equal parts white and brown if I’m feeling adventurous.
- You do not need leavening for these flourless cookies, but if you want a little more stability, you can add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda.
- Reese’s Pieces AND Peanut Butter Cups make these the ultimate peanut butter cookies. Since this dough is denser than a standard butter-and-flour dough, you should chop your peanut butter cups into small, uniform pieces. Large chunks of candy can create fault lines in a flourless cookie, causing it to break apart after baking. For the best look, press a few extra Reese’s Pieces into the tops of the dough balls right before they go into the oven for that perfect bakery finish.
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Dorothy’s Testing Notes
- Unlike flour-based cookies, these flourless versions are extremely fragile the moment they come out of the oven. The sugar is essentially molten and needs to cool to room temperature to fully set. Let them sit on the hot baking sheet for at least 15 minutes before attempting to move them to a wire rack, or they will likely fall apart in your hands.
- You can use crunchy peanut butter if you want for even more texture in your cookie.
- For a perfectly round cookie, roll the dough balls between the palms of your hand before placing on cookie sheet to make them all uniform and the same. The dough is wetter than normal cookie dough, so dampen your hands so it doesn’t stick.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup (267g) peanut butter
- 1 large egg
- 1 cup (200g) sugar, (all granulated, all brown, or a combination of the two)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda, (optional for more stability)
- ½ cup (100g) Reese’s Pieces, (regular or mini)
- 1 cup (136g) finely chopped Reese’s peanut butter cups
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two cookie sheets with Silpats or parchment paper.
- Mix peanut butter, egg, sugars, and baking soda in a large bowl. You can use a mixer, but it’s easy to do by hand. Once incorporated, stir in Reese’s Pieces and peanut butter cups.
- Scoop balls of cookie dough onto your prepared cookie sheets. We used a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop for this step. Use the tines of a fork to gently flatten each cookie.
- Bake for 8 minutes. Cool 15 minutes before removing from cookie sheets. Note: these cookies can be crumbly so be careful when picking them up or packing them in lunches.
Notes
- You can also make this with 1 cup of all brown sugar or 1 cup all granulated sugar
- Baking soda can be omitted without any issues.
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Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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How to Make Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookies
- Because there is no butter and no flour, you can stir these by hand or use a mixer. The dough should be smooth and a little wetter than normal cookie dough once mixed.
- Stir in any add-ins (make sure they’re chopped fine so they don’t weigh down the cookie too much).
- Scoop 1-tablespoon or 2-tablespoon balls of dough. It’s best to bake on parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
- Always press peanut butter cookies with a fork to make the criss-cross marks. Peanut butter cookies don’t spread like regular ones and these will spread even less without all the fat.
FAQs
Yes! Using all brown sugar will make the cookies even chewier and give them a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Yes, as long as your candy add-ins are certified gluten-free, the 3-ingredient base itself is naturally flourless and gluten-free.
Of all the cookies I have made in my lifetime…I haven’t really done peanutbutter (for no good reason); I made this batch a couple of hours ago and just tried one…O.M.G!! No need to look for any other recipe! These are the bomb! i was worried they wouldn’t hold together after reading your initial comments; but they are ok when moving them carefully. Will definitely be making them again. Thx for sharing!
I have everything except the candy. My granddaughter is just starting to bake..now these are on the list! Thanks for such a great recipe! 🙂
Enjoy Karen! They’re amazing!
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