Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies are an easy to make slice and bake chocolate chip cookie recipe with a melt in your mouth texture, a light peanut butter flavor, and plenty of chocolate chips!

The all time most popular post on my blog so far has been my Double Dark Chocolate Shortbread Cookies.

I’m happy for that cookie, I really am.  It deserves the attention it’s gotten, after all, when was the last time you saw a cookie that intensely chocolaty?   But I got to thinking that my other shortbread cookies deserve a little love, too.

Like this one.  It’s made with creamy peanut butter, sea salt and milk chocolate chips.

It’s like if one kid had a room full of trophies and the other always got stuck out in left field.  It kinda gets my maternal adrenaline flowing.

You know I love these slice and bake shortbread recipes.  Who wouldn’t love to have a log or two of cookie dough hanging out in their fridge?  You can get all the measuring and mixing and messy hands out of the way early and then have the luxury of fresh dough waiting at your beck and call.   Let me put it another way: when you’ve got this dough in the fridge you’re 12 minutes away from nirvana.

If you want to try a rolled dough version of these, try my Milk Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies.

These cookies have a melting texture, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about the magical combination of peanut butter and milk chocolate.  They’ll even stick a wee bit to the roof of your mouth…have a cold glass of milk ready.

Tips for success when making peanut butter chocolate chip shortbread cookies—

• Make sure to start with room temperature butter.  This helps the dough come together smoothly.  And thoroughly combine it with the peanut butter until the mixture is creamy.
• Measure your flour carefully.   I fluff the flour first to loosen it, then scoop the measuring cup and level it off.  This helps insure you get an accurate measure and not too much flour, which will affect the quality of the cookies.
• Mix the dough until it comes together and is no longer crumbly.
• Use regular, not natural peanut butter.  I use Jif.
• If you have trouble with the dough crumbling when you slice it, this is due to the chocolate chips.  I just form the cookies back into shape on the cookie sheet.  It helps to use a very sharp knife, and you can also try a sharp serrated knife to cut through the chips.  You can use tiny chips if you want to, which will help, but I prefer the taste of the big chunks of chocolate.
• If you make smaller cookies (i.e. more than 10-12) adjust the baking time, it will take slightly less time for them to cook.
• Expect these cookies to have a shortbread texture, which is to say delicate and crumbly, and very buttery.  They aren’t the same as a regular chewy or cakey cookie.  Shortbread has a distinctive texture.

don’t forget to pin these peanut butter chocolate chip shortbread cookies!