Chocolate-Peanut Butter Swirl Cookies

By Samantha Seneviratne

Updated Jan. 11, 2021

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Swirl Cookies
Con Poulos for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
Total Time
45 minutes
Rating
4(3,470)
Comments
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These are like those three-ingredient peanut butter cookies everyone loves, but with a little cocoa powder and bittersweet chocolate thrown in to make them fancy. You only need five ingredients and a bit of elbow grease to put them together. While semisweet chocolate (in bar or chip form) would certainly work here, bittersweet chocolate is a better choice. The darker chocolate, along with the cocoa powder, adds a fruity bitterness that contrasts nicely with the sweet peanut butter.

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Ingredients

Yield:About 2 dozen cookies
  • 1(16-ounce/455-gram) jar smooth peanut butter (not natural)
  • 2cups/400 grams granulated sugar, plus more for assembling
  • 3large eggs
  • ¾teaspoon kosher salt
  • ½cup/85 grams chopped bittersweet chocolate
  • 3tablespoons cocoa powder
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (24 servings)

205 calories; 11 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 6 grams monounsaturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 24 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 21 grams sugars; 5 grams protein; 72 milligrams sodium

Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

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Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.

  2. Step 2

    In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, or using a handheld mixer, beat the peanut butter and sugar on high just until combined, about 1 minute. Add the eggs and salt and beat on medium until well combined, about 1 minute. Transfer half the dough to a bowl or a clean work surface.

  3. Step 3

    Add the chocolate and cocoa powder to the remaining dough in the bowl of the electric mixer and beat on medium until combined.

  4. Step 4

    Portion the peanut butter dough into 1 tablespoon scoops and the chocolate dough into heaping 1 tablespoon scoops. Squeeze together one scoop of peanut butter dough and one scoop of chocolate dough and roll into a neat ball. Transfer the balls to the prepared pans, at least 1½ inches apart. Using the flat bottom of a glass dipped in granulated sugar, press each ball into a flat circle that is ½-inch thick. (After pressing the first cookie, the glass will be greasy enough for the sugar to adhere to it.)

  5. Step 5

    Bake the cookies until set and slightly puffed, 14 to 16 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through baking. Transfer the baking sheets to wire racks to cool. (Cookies will be quite crumbly and delicate right after baking and need a few minutes to firm up.)

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Ratings

4 out of 5
3,470 user ratings
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Comments

Peggy

I am a trained cook and have never had a bad experience with a recipe. I know how to look at one and see what's wrong with how it's written and/or how to do it faster. Today I made this recipe was fairly easy. It came out of my Viking oven crumbling and therefore useless. Also a waste of time and money. Should there have been a bit of flour in it to hold it together? Baking powder? I'd love to know where I went wrong.

Meribeth

I’m a pastry chef and followed the recipe precisely and these were inedible. I had misgivings when I saw that there wasn’t any flour in the ingredient list and how greasy the dough was, but I had faith in the NYT Cooking site. Big mistake.

Steph

Saw the scary reviews, got curious, had to try for myself. They're great! The dough is a strange consistency, kind of sticky. I compared this to a few other flourless PB cookie recipes and noticed that at least one other recommends chilling the dough. I refrigerated mine for about half an hour, and then refrigerated the shaped cookies for another 15 minutes before baking. They got nice and puffy in the oven, no problems with crumbling. The centers are wonderfully chewy.

Sarah

I wish I had seen the comments before baking these. Mine turned out so greasy that I had to squeeze the dough between paper towels. They melted while baking and turned to hard pucks after cooking. So disappointing.

Brian

I made these as directed — with the addition of a 30 minute fridge chill before forming the dough and 15 minutes in the freezer once former, before baking. The dough requires some molding with your hands, but held ultimately held together well. Lovely flavor!

Flora

These could have been good gluten-free cookies except for the perennial problem with NYT dessert recipes that I keep forgetting—too much salt! They were so fiddly to put together that I probably won’t try the recipe again, but pre-chilling the dough and letting the cookies cool on the sheet did work. Only the excess of salt ruined these. Frustrating.

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