Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies
Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies are flourless with a rich and chewy texture, made with only 5 simple pantry ingredients in under 15 minutes!
If you loved this recipe, you might also love my Flourless Chocolate Cake and Flourless Oatmeal Cookies (especially if you love chewy cookies)!
These classic peanut butter cookies are my go-to when I want to whip up something quick that I know everyone will love, made with simple pantry ingredients I already have at home. They have an amazing soft texture with a decorative cross-hatch pattern on top. These can also be crispy, depending on how long you cook them.
The sweet peanut butter flavor is perfect for the peanut butter lovers in your house! This sweet treat is great for packing with lunches or enjoying after dinner. You can also freeze the peanut butter cookie dough, so you can bake a batch of these any time!
Table of contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Fun Activity! These cookies are so easy to throw together, making them the perfect activity for the family! You can also add fun toppings or mix-ins like chocolate chips, sprinkles, or dried cranberries.
Easy to Make. This is a pretty straightforward cookie recipe, and doesn’t have any crazy steps to do. Just mix everything together and bake! Homemade cookies don’t have to be a headache!
No Waiting! In a regular cookie recipe, you’d typically cool the dough before baking, because it helps stop the butter from warming too much and causing the cookies to spread. We’re not using any butter, so no need to wait!
Simple Ingredient List. These are flourless peanut butter cookies that use only 5 ingredients that you already have in your pantry! Our four ingredients if you only use one type of sugar. They’re also naturally gluten free, and you don’t have to worry about picking just the right gluten free flour blend.
Ingredients You’ll Need
Creamy Peanut Butter. This is the main ingredients for these cookies, for the flavor and the texture. Choose a creamy peanut butter over a crunchy peanut butter, because it mixes better with the other ingredients. The type of peanut butter definitely matters here.
I don’t recommend using natural peanut butter, the flavor will be less sweet and the texture less soft. There’s also the risk of too much of the oil on top of the peanut butter making the cookies spread in the oven. Try to use regular smooth peanut butter.
White Sugar and Brown Sugar. We’re using a combination of granulated sugar and brown sugar. The granulated sugar adds a good amount of sweetness, while the brown sugar gives us a hint of molasses and moisture in the cookies.
I like to make my flourless peanut butter cookies with brown sugar, because I think it adds a really nice flavor to the cookie. But you can use all granulated sugar if that’s all you have.
Vanilla. Vanilla extract adds flavor to the cookies. You can also experiment with different extract flavors!
Egg. Eggs act as a binding agent that helps hold everything together, while the yolk adds a small amount of fat to the cookies (which means flavor and texture).
Kitchen Tools
For this peanut butter cookie recipe you’ll need a cookie sheet, a mixing bowl, a medium cookie scoop, and a fork.
For mixing, you can use a handheld electric mixer or an electric hand mixer with a paddle attachment.
How to Make Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies
Time needed: 15 minutes
- Mix the ingredients.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside. In a stand mixer (or with an electric hand mixer in a medium bowl) on medium speed, cream together peanut butter and sugar until just combined. Add the egg and vanilla extract and continue to mix until combined.
- Form the cookies.
Use an ice cream scoop to measure the dough and use your hands to roll the dough into 1 1/2-inch balls, placing them on the prepared baking sheet. Flatten with a fork on the baking sheet, leaving fork marks in a criss-cross pattern on top.
- Bake.
Bake in the preheated oven (on the middle oven rack) for 8-10 minutes, or until the cookies start to turn slightly brown around the bottom edges. The cookies will harden as they cool, so wait 5-10 minutes before removing them from the baking sheet and placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.
Recipe Variations
- Try adding chocolate chips, dried cranberries, or a sprinkle of flakey salt on top.
- You can swap the peanut butter for almond butter in this recipe. Just make sure any oil on top of the almond butter is mixed in really well, to prevent these cookies from spreading.
- Add a chocolate kiss on top right after they come out of the oven for peanut butter blossom cookies. If you’re doing this, don’t worry about making the fork pattern.
Recipe Tip! The fork marks on top of the cookies are just a way to flatten the cookie, and partially decorative. If you don’t use a fork to put marks into the cookie, they will just bake bigger instead of flat.
Frequently Asked Questions
These cookies can become dry and crumbly when they are cooked too long. They typically keep cooking when you take them out of the oven, so it is easy for them to over-cook. You should see slightly crisp edges that are darker than the rest of the cookie.
Another possibility is there is too much moisture in the cookie dough. This can happen if you used natural peanut butter and too much oil poured in. I like to use regular peanut butter instead of the natural kind for this reason.
For a really chewy peanut butter cookies recipe, you have to watch the cook time closely and remove the cookies just as you see them start to brown on the bottom edges, about 8 minutes. You can also try using all brown sugar, or add a small amount of molasses to get them a bit more chewy.
Recipe Tip! You can also freeze the cookie dough! Use a cookie scoop to make balls of dough and freeze them on a sheet pan. Once they’re completely frozen, transfer the cookie dough balls to a freezer-safe bag and store in the freezer until you’re ready to bake.
More Gluten Free Cookies
- Gluten Free Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Gluten Free Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- Gluten Free Sugar Cookies & Icing
Storage
Store gluten free peanut butter cookies at room temperature in an airtight container for 4-5 days.
Freeze for up to 3 months in an airtight container. Place a piece of parchment paper in-between the cookies to keep them from sticking.
Cooking Tips
- I like to use a parchment lined baking sheet. I think this helps prevent the cookies from sticking more than just greasing it. Make sure it’s a rimmed baking sheet, just in case the cookies slide when taking them out of the oven.
- Don’t skip flattening the flourless cookie dough with a fork. Because this dough doesn’t have any butter, we need to get it nice and flat (without having to roll it out).
- Don’t wait until they’re hard in the oven. These cookies will keep cooking once you remove them, so take them out after 8-10 minutes while they’re still soft! After a few minutes, place them on a wire rack to cool faster.
- I use about 1 1/2 inch balls of cookie dough per cookie (flattened with the fork making the crosshatch pattern). Any larger than that, the baking time might change to 10-12 minutes per cookie.
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Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Equipment
- 1 Sheet pan
- 1 Stand mixer or electric hand mixer
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Cream together peanut butter and sugar until just combined. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until well combined.
- Use your hands to roll the dough into 1 1/2-inch balls, placing them on the prepared baking sheet. Flatten the dough balls with a fork, leaving fork marks in a criss-cross pattern on top.
- Bake in the preheated oven (on the middle oven rack) for 8-10 minutes, or until the cookies start to turn slightly brown around the bottom edges. The cookies will harden as they cool, so wait 5-10 minutes before removing them from the baking sheet and placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.
Notes
- The cookies will harden as they cool. Don’t be worried if they’re soft when the time is up.
- You can swap the peanut butter for almond butter in this recipe. Just make sure any oil on top of the almond butter is mixed in really well, to prevent these cookies from spreading.
- Don’t skip flattening the cookies with a fork. Because this dough doesn’t have any flour or butter, they won’t drop by themselves.
- Make sure you have a baking mat or line your cookie sheets with parchment paper, to make sure they don’t stick.
- These cookies will keep cooking once you remove them, so take them out after 8-10 minutes while they’re still soft.
- I use about 1 1/2 inch balls of cookie dough per cookie. Any larger than that, the baking time might change to 10-12 minutes per cookie.
Nutrition
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