If these weren’t the first cookies you baked with your grandparents or parents, let’s remedy that right now. If you have a jar of peanut butter and some leftover powdered sugar from making my Pumpkin Tiramisu, you can make these cookies in minutes! This recipe is for the classic criss-cross peanut butter cookies, but they’re egg-free and gluten-free! Browse my other eggless recipes here. But also, if you need to make these with sunflower seed butter to make them nut-free, you absolutely can!
How to Make 2 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies
Before you even grab the ingredients from the pantry for these 2 ingredient peanut butter cookies, preheat the oven, because this recipe takes no time at all.
The Ingredients
Peanut Butter. The only type of peanut butter that works for this recipe is real, natural peanut butter. Do not use conventional peanut butter that contains hydrogenated vegetable oil (cottonseed, soybean, and rapeseed oil). If your peanut butter contains fillers and extra oil (like palm oil, etc.), it will add too much oil to this recipe and the recipe will fail. I repeat: ONLY USE NATURAL PEANUT BUTTER FOR THIS RECIPE. I like Jif Natural, Santa Cruz Organics, or Justin’s. If you use a peanut butter that contains additional oil, it will ruin this recipe. Powdered Sugar. You really can’t substitute this for regular granulated sugar, because powdered sugar contains a small amount of cornstarch. This cornstarch is what thickens and holds the dough together. In general, cornstarch makes super soft cookies, which is why I add it in my Chocolate Chippers Cookies.
The Instructions
The cookies should cool completely on the pan, and then move to a wire rack to cool completely. Right out of the oven, these cookies are super soft and crumbly, so it’s best to give them time to set up by cooling them completely before serving. You can speed this up and help them firm up by putting them in the fridge, too! A few cracks will appear in the surface of the cookies, but that’s just fine! You might also like my Almond Flour Peanut Butter Cookies!
Tips and Tricks
More Favorites from Dessert for Two
The Only Type of Peanut Butter You Can Use with this Recipe:
As stated above, this recipe will not work with conventional style peanut butters. To know if your peanut butter is conventional, read the ingredients. If it contains hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed, soybean and rapeseed oil), this means that the peanuts were ground and then added to oil to make the peanut butter. This type of peanut butter contains too much oil, and the recipe WILL FAIL. The cookies will leak everywhere and not set. Read your ingredient label on your natural style peanut butter, and make these two ingredient peanut butter cookies with real peanut butter. Natural peanut butter contains only two ingredients: peanuts and salt. Here is a Food and Wine article on the difference between real peanut butter versus conventional peanut butter. Peanut Butter: The only type of peanut butter that works for this recipe is real, natural peanut butter. Do not use conventional peanut butter that contains hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed, soybean, and rapeseed oil). If your peanut butter contains fillers and extra oil (like palm oil, etc.), it will add too much oil to this recipe and the recipe will fail. I repeat: ONLY USE NATURAL PEANUT BUTTER FOR THIS RECIPE. I like Jif Natural, Santa Cruz Organics, or Justin’s. If you use a peanut butter that contains additional oil, it will ruin this recipe. Real peanut butter only has two ingredients: peanuts and salt. Do not use a peanut butter that contains added oils; the recipe will fail.Powdered Sugar: Please don’t use granulated sugar in its place, because powdered sugar contains a small amount of cornstarch. Cornstarch thickens and holds the dough together. You can use ½ cup of pitted dates that you puree in the food processor in place of the sugar, if you like.
