These Milk Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Shortbread Cookies are an easy slice and bake chocolate chip cookie and a to-die-for combination of peanut butter, chocolate chips, and shortbread!
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies are one of my most popular recipes
I thought it would be fun to try the recipe with milk chocolate for a slightly different flavor profile. Truth is, I’ll take any excuse to play with chocolate and peanut butter, the results are always delicious!
Shortbread is Scottish in origin
In its classic form it’s a super simple dough made by rubbing butter and sugar into flour. For all its humble farmhouse origins, shortbread has a deliciously addictive melt in your mouth texture that is unmatched in the baking world.
In fact the flavor of plain shortbread is wonderful because you actually taste the butter and flour themselves, and it’s a wonderful recipe to know because you almost always have the ingredients on hand to make up a batch.
Shortbread and shortbread cookies have a unique texture
You can roll out shortbread dough for cut out cookies, you can pat it into a pan or a cast iron skillet, or you can form the dough into a log to slice and bake. Certain kinds of shortbread dough can be pressed into intricate molds. Shortbread is unlike most cookies in that it contains no added liquids or eggs. It keeps its shape while baking, and it bakes at a low temperature so it doesn’t brown.
Shortbread literally melts in your mouth!
My original cookies were formulated to be slice and bake, but for these I went for a sleeker look. I chilled the dough in a disk, like pie dough, and then rolled it to about 1/3 inch thickness and cut it out with a cookie cutter. You can see that even the tiny fluted edges of my cookie cutter held their shape after baking.
Tips for working with shortbread recipes
Shortbread dough requires that you really work in the soft butter and sugar into the flour. The butter must be truly soft. Since there are no added liquids, the moisture of the butter is what holds the dough together. It will start out dry and crumbly, but eventually the butter, sugar and flour become one dough. It helps to get right in there with your hands to finish the process.
Keep in mind that any shortbread can always be patted into a pan and cooked that way. It helps to cut the shortbread into squares while it is still warm.
try some of my other shortbread recipes…
- Butter Pecan Shortbread
- Cranberry Orange Shortbread Cookies
- Cornish Clotted Cream Shortbread
- Lemon Sugar Shortbread
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Milk Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Shortbread Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature, make sure it is completely soft
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter, yes, you can use chunky
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar, yes, you can use regular sugar
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips, you can use mini chips if you like
Instructions
- Set oven to 350F
- Cream the butter and peanut butter together until thoroughly combined. Beat in the vanilla.
- Sift the sugar, flour and salt together and then add to the butter mixture. Mix until the dough comes together and is no longer dry and crumbly. A stand mixer helps with this job.
- Add the chocolate chips in towards the end of mixing and distribute evenly.
- Turn the dough out onto a board and continue to work it with your hands until it comes together like a pie dough. Divide it in two equal parts, and shape them into flat disks. Wrap tightly in plastic and refrigerate for about an hour.
- Roll out the chilled dough on a lightly floured surface to your desired thickness. I rolled mine to about 1/4-1/3 inch.
- Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet for about 13-15 minutes. They will soft and white even when done, but will firm up as they cool.
- Let the cookies rest on the hot cookie sheet for a minute or two, and then transfer carefully to a cooling rack.
 Don’t forget to pin these Milk Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Shortbread Cookies!
Shortbread really is my favourite biscuit add chocolate and I am in heaven.
I’ve been eating shortbread for many years and there’s no other biscuit quite like it, I love your pics and I’m eager to check out those links 🙂
Looks super good.. would love to try!
I love shortbread cookes. Just say butter (or heavy cream) and I’m won over. BTW, I used your whole wheat oatmeal pancake recipe on New Year’s Day but substituted whole wheat pastry and buckwheat flour for the flours, coconut oil for the butter (we were temporarily out of butter gadzooks) and sucanat for the brown sugar. They were yummmy.
Hi Sue! I hope you and your girls had a great holiday! You know I have never made shortbread cookies and you have tons of them on your blog. I have to give one of them a try. I was just eyeing the dark chocolate shortbread ones but then saw these and I’m torn because both sound so appealing. BTW, your photos look great. I can totally tell it’s a winter afternoon treat! xoxo, Jackie
Oh go for the dark chocolate one, Jackie! The only reason I ever got into shortbread was because we got my daughter a cookie cookbook when she was young and that was the first thing we made together. Haven’t looked back since!
No, I did NOT know that! And I love shortbread – wish I had some of these to celebrate. They look fantastic.
Yum yum yu yum yum yum yum:-)
I have often looked at your PB shortbread and also your chocolate one and wanted to make both – the issue of crumbly dough you’re right is something to take into account with shortbread and making sure the butter is truly soft. I love that you rolled this out and used a cookie cutter. Those edges..the pale centers, they are so perfect!
For some reason I’m averse to rolling out cookie dough, I don’t know why, it’s not that difficult or time consuming. And now that I see how much sharper the shortbread cookies can look when made that way, I might keep doing it.
Thanks Mary!
You are truly the queen of shortbreads, Sue. These look amazing and they are well deserving of another million pins. I think I’ll start them off on Pinterest now. Have a blessed day!