Your favorite childhood lunch…but make it a cookie. These Bakery Style PB & J Cookies are the cookies of my dreams. A thick, soft, and rather huge peanut butter cookie, with a jammy strawberry center and chopped peanuts serving up the crunch factor. They’re sweet and a bit salty and honestly I can’t get enough of them. Let’s make ’em!
How to Make Bakery Style PB & J Cookies
You can use homemade strawberry jam for these cookies, or a jar of your favorite strawberry preserves. I made my own quick jam, and it’s honestly SO easy.
To Make Your Own Strawberry Jam
Add the sliced strawberries, water, lemon juice, and sugar to a medium sauce pan. Cook over medium heat until the strawberries start to break down and release their juices, about 5 minutes. You can use a wooden spoon to help break up the strawberries.
Once the strawberries are soft and the sugar has dissolved, carefully pour the hot mixture into your food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Return to the saucepan over medium low heat. In a separate small bowl, stir together the cornstarch and 2 tsp of water until combined and smooth. Add the cornstarch slurry to the strawberries and cook until it begins to simmer. Then remove from the heat and allow to cool completely. It will continue to thicken as it cools.
Make the Peanut Butter Cookie Dough
In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugars, and peanut butter for 5 minutes. Make sure to scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl as needed. Add the egg and vanilla, and mix for another minute. The dough should be light and fluffy in texture.
Add the dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. Stir in the chopped peanuts. Use a scale to measure out the dough into 3.5 oz scoops. If you don’t have a scale, it’s roughly 4 TBSP of dough and should make 8 large cookie dough balls. Use your hands to roll the dough into balls, then roll into some course sugar like turbinado.
Place the cookie dough onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and use a spoon to create a well in the center of each cookie. Fill each well with about 1 TBSP of strawberry jam. Sprinkle the cookies with chopped peanuts, then chill for at least 30 minutes.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 and line two cookies sheets with parchment paper. I love this precut parchment paper from Amazon it makes my baking life so much easier and doesn’t turn up like the stuff in a roll.
Bake 4 cookies per cookie sheet and give them enough room because they will spread a bit. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and let them cool on the hot sheet pan for 4-5 minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Pro Tip- for perfectly round cookies, use a round cookie cutter slightly larger than your cookies and scoot the still-warm cookies into perfect circles. This tip is curtesy of Erin over at cloudykitchen.com and it’s my favorite trick ever. You can also use a rubber spatula to scoot the edges of the cookies back towards the center, but you have to do this while the cookies are still hot, before they have set.
Bakery Style PB & J Cookies
- Prep Time: 30
- Cook Time: 12
- Total Time: 42 minutes
- Yield: 8 Large Cookies 1x
Description
Large bakery style peanut butter cookies filled with strawberry jam and topped with chopped peanuts.
Ingredients
For the Strawberry Jam
- 1 C Chopped Fresh Strawberries
- 1/4 C Sugar
- Juice of 1/2 of a Lemon
- 1/4 C Water + 2 tsp, divided
- 2 tsp Cornstarch
For the Peanut Butter Cookies
- 1/2 C (113 g) Salted Butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 C (135 g) Creamy Peanut Butter
- 3/4 C (170 g) Light Brown Sugar
- 1/4 C (55 g) Granulated Sugar
- 1 Lg Egg, at room temperature
- 1 tsp. Pure Vanilla Extract
- 1 1/4 C (190 g) All Purpose Flour
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1/2 C Chopped Peanuts + extra to sprinkle on top of cookies
- Corse Sugar for Rolling Dough
Instructions
For the Strawberry Jam
- Add the strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, and 1/4 C of water to a small-medium saucepan over medium heat.
- Cook down until the strawberries begin to release their juices and become soft and the sugar dissolves.
- Remove from heat and add to a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.
- Return the strawberry mixture to the saucepan over medium-low heat.
- In a separate small bowl, whisk the cornstarch and 2 tsp of water until smooth.
- Add the cornstarch slurry to the strawberry puree and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 3 minutes.
- Remove from heat and allow to cool completely. Jam will continue to thicken as it cools.
For the Peanut Butter Cookies
- In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugars, and peanut butter for 5 minutes. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl as needed.
- Add the egg and vanilla and mix another 1 minute.
- Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix until the dry ingredients are just incorporated, making sure not to overmix. Stop the mixer when a few streaks of flour remain.
- Use a rubber spatula to stir in the chopped peanuts.
- Use a kitchen scale to measure the dough out into 3.5 oz scoops (about 4 TBSP of dough)
- Roll the dough into balls in your hands then roll in the corse sugar.
- Place the cookie dough onto a cookie sheet and use the back of a spoon to create a well in the center of each cookie. Fill each well with about 1 TBSP of strawberry jam. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts.
- Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes, up to overnight.
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Bake 4 cookies per sheet leaving room for them to spread.
- Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.
- Allow cookies to sit on the hot cookie sheet for 4-5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
If you loved this recipe for Bakery Style PB & J Cookies, be sure to check out some of my other cookie recipes like these Bakery Style S’mores Cookies or these Double Chocolate Nutella Cookies.
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