Chunky Almond Peanut Butter Cookies

Why This Chunky Almond Peanut Butter Cookies Works

In the bowl, the peanut butter and almond butter coat the sugar and egg so everything sticks together instead of spreading into a puddle in the oven. The nut butters are thick and a little oily, so the dough feels dense but still soft enough to scoop. Sugar pulls a bit of moisture out of the egg and nut butters, so the dough holds its shape when it goes onto the baking sheet.

In the oven, the sugar starts to melt and the edges of the cookies dry out first, which is why the rims turn golden while the centers stay a little soft. Baking soda reacts with the small amount of moisture in the egg and nut butters and gives the cookies just enough lift so they aren’t hard or flat. As the cookies cool on the sheet, the melted sugar and nut butters firm up again, so the cookies set into a chewy center with chunky bits of peanut and a slightly crisp edge.

Mistakes To Avoid

Using natural peanut butter or almond butter that has a lot of oil on top and not stirring it in well first can throw off the dough. The extra oil makes the cookies spread too much in the oven, so they bake up flat, greasy, and fragile instead of thick and chunky.

Adding extra egg or another liquid to “loosen” the dough often backfires. The dough then turns more batter-like, so the cookies puff strangely, lose their chewy bite, and can bake up cakey in the center instead of dense and cookie-like.

Pulling the cookies as soon as the tops look dry, without waiting for lightly golden edges, leaves the centers underbaked. Once cooled, they stay soft and pasty inside and can fall apart when picked up.

Skipping the 5-minute rest on the hot baking sheet makes the texture suffer. Moving them right away while they’re still very soft causes them to bend, crack, or break instead of firming up into sturdy, chunky cookies.