Fun, easy to make, soft, lightly crumbly homemade peanut butter sandwich cookies with a creamy peanut butter filling in a fun to eat peanut shell shape.
There are only a handful of store bought cookies that I buy occasionally, usually Oreos and Nutter Butter peanut butter sandwich cookies. Recently I bought a package of Nutter Butter Cookies and while my husband was munching on one he said I should try making them at home.
Homemade Nutter Butter Cookie Recipe
Ingredients:
- Flour: all purpose flour is used here, easy and you always have it on hand
- Butter: use real butter and unsalted for this recipe, you’ll use it in the cookies and in the frosting
- Brown sugar: this is the sweetened for the cookies and lends to a nice color
- Egg: this helps find the cookies together
- Peanut butter: you can use chunky or smooth peanut butter here. Just be sure you are using a kind like Jif or Skippy and not a natural peanut butter where the oil separates and you need to stir it. That kind doesn’t have the right texture for this recipe.
- Powdered sugar: you’ll use this in the center frosting
- Milk: just a little bit goes in the frosting to help it be spreadable
Recipe Instructions:
- These couldn’t be easier! Mix up the ingredients for the cookies like you do any cookies recipe.
- Shape the cookies by rolling some of the dough into a log and flattening it with a fork. Pinch the centers of your oblong oval so that it has that classic peanut or Nutter Butter cookie shape.
- Bake and cool.
- Mix up your peanut butter frosting and spread it between two cookies. Enjoy!
Shaping the cookies:
At first I thought I’d have to use a cookie cutter and it would be time-consuming to make them, but he said he thought we could just pinch them in the middle. So a few days later I decided to give them a try. I searched to see if anyone else had made homemade nutter butters. There were lots of homemade nutter butter posts, and most of them just pinched the dough in the middle.
So I just used my husband favorite peanut butter cookie recipe and adapted it to make nutter butters pinched in the middle.
Frequently Asked Questions
This is a homemade peanut butter frosting made with butter, peanut butter, powdered sugar, a little milk, and vanilla. Then it is spread between too cookies and is SO good!
It’s a crispy peanut butter sandwich cookie with a layer of peanut butter icing in the middle.
My homemade peanut butter sandwich cookies are softer than the store bought cookies, because I like a softer cookie. If you like your cookies crisp, cook them a little longer. They were also larger than a packaged Nutter Butter cookie, so just one cookie should satisfy your peanut butter cookie craving.
More cookie recipes you might like:
- Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Skookie
- Peanut Butter Nutella Cookie Cups
- Chunky Peanut Butter Cookies
- Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you’ve tried this Nutter Butter Cookie recipe or any other recipe on Barbara Bakes, then don’t forget to rate the recipe and leave me a comment below! I would love to hear about your experience making it. And if you snapped some pictures of it, share it with me on Instagram so I can repost on my stories.
Homemade Nutter Butter Cookies
Ingredients
Cookies
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup peanut butter chunky or creamy
- Additional sugar for coating cookies
Filling
- 4 tablespoon butter room temperature
- ½ cup peanut butter chunky or creamy
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons milk
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- In a small bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well combined. Add the peanut butter and mix to combine. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just blended.
- Form dough into 1 inch balls. Roll in sugar. Shape into a log. Roll log in sugar. Place logs on cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Using the tines of a fork, make a criss-cross pattern in the dough. Pinch the middle of the cookie to make a peanut shape.
- Bake 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned on the edges and still soft in center. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Filling
- In a large mixing bowl, beat butter on medium speed until fluffy. Beat in peanut butter, 1 cup powdered sugar, the milk and vanilla. Gradually beat in remaining powdered sugar until smooth.
- To assemble when the cookies have cooled completely, add a scant tablespoon of icing to the bottom side of one cookie and spread it out. Add a second cookie to the icing so that the two bottom sides are facing the frosting. Repeat with remaining cookies.
Notes
- You can use creamy peanut butter for this recipe. I love it with creamy and my husband loves it with chunky. Just be sure to use a peanut butter like Jif or Skippy and not a natural kind that the oil separates. The natural peanut butter doesn’t have the right texture for this recipe.
Nutrition
You’ll love how rich and creamy these peanut butter cookies are and they are just so fun to eat. Enjoy!
Christina
Can I make the dough ahead of time and refrigerate it?
Barbara Schieving
Hi Christina – I haven’t tried it, but it should work well to make the dough ahead of time and refrigerate it. It generally takes longer to bake when the dough has been refrigerated, so you’ll probably need to add a few minutes to the cook time. Let me know how it goes.
Sarah
I didn’t make the filing because I was out of powdered sugar but the cookie was legit one of the best peanut butter cookies I’ve ever had. I can only imagine how good the filling would be.
Barbara Schieving
That’s so nice – thanks Sarah!
Monica Wong
This are the BEST cookies I have ever made. I don’t live in the US so its basically impossible to get these in my country, but I love them SO much. Thank you, my friends love them!!
Barbara Schieving
That’s awesome – thanks Monica!
KnitWit
Oh my gosh. These are amazing. Just made them – one will never be enough. I haven’t had nutter butter cookies in years (we make pretty much everything from scratch) so when I saw this recipe, I had to make it. Everyone (even my picky younger brother) loved them.
Barbara Schieving
That’s awesome – thanks!
Kim Shetz
All the items I’ve seen on your site look awesome!!!! Can’t wait to try all of them!
Barbara Schieving
Thanks Kim – enjoy!
Marilyn
Is that all purpose flour or self rising? I know you use baking soda but I didn’t see any baking powder. I thought you had to use both if you use all purpose flour.
Barbara Schieving
Hi Marilyn – all purpose flour not self rising. These cookies you don’t want to rise very much, so you don’t want to use too much leavening.
Your Mom
Holy Amazeballs. This worked great. My husband is a NutterButterholic and they are very expensive. He especially digs the filling. Thanks for a great recipe. You’re very talented!
Barbara Schieving
Glad it was a hit 🙂
Emily
Hi I was wondering if you can use creamy peanut butter instead of crunchy (or would it mess up the recipe?) My brothers birthdays coming up and since for my moms I made a homemade version of her favorite cookies he wants me to do his but I’ve made peanut butter cookies for him with crunchy and he liked the creamy better.
Barbara Schieving
Hi Emily – how nice of you to make them for your brother’s birthday. You can definitely make them with creamy peanut butter if that’s what he prefers. Have fun!
Carly C
Just made these cookies last night. I didn’t have creamy peanut butter for the filling and I think it would have been better. They were so yummie, a HUGE success.
mrslindanelson
Thank you for the recipe!
Smelled like nutter butters, I made mines larger in size as well, they were perfect! I chilled my dough to make it easier to work with. Added a half tsp of vanilla more to the dough too I like it richly sweet, used salted butter (had on hand) and creamed the butter and sugar in a stand mixer til it was fluffy which made mixing the peanut butter very easy.
Barbara Schieving
Thanks – so glad you loved them. We’re vanilla lovers too
lindsey
tried to make these for my boyfriend for xmas this year, cause he likes peanut buttery things. total fail! not sure where i went wrong, but the batter was absurdly sticky, i had the worst time trying to shape them up, and then they basically melted when in the oven. where did i go wrong?!
Barbara Schieving
Hi Lindsey – sorry you had trouble with the recipe. If the batter was too sticky, the most likely cause is an inadvertent error in measuring, or a substitute of an ingredient. Did you perhaps use a natural peanut butter instead of a traditional peanut butter? I’ve made this peanut butter cookie recipe dozens of times, and never had a problem.
Karolyn
I tried this recipie and the cookie batter was a little difficult to work with it came out tasting more like a peanut butter cookie than nutter butters but they still tasted delicious.
Telicia Ramon
These are delicious! The cookie recipe is simple, easy and fast to make! It moved up to my favorite peanut butter cookie recipe. I got 21 large sandwiches from this so I can’t even imagine what size only 14 would have been! I was skeptical when first seeing the cookie about making the peanut shape- thought it would be time consuming but rolling into a log made it super easy and fast! You won’t regret making these!!
Barbara Schieving
Thanks for the rave review!
Sue {munchkin munchies}
I’m SURE they’re good, and what fun!
Renee @ CreativeMamaMessyHouse
A must try for sure! Nutter butters are one of my kids’ favorite cookie
Kim Beaulieu
These look amazing. I have to try this.
I have to admit I’ve never had a nutter butter. I’m not sure if it’s just where we live, or if they just don’t sell them in Canada. I cannot believe I’ve never had one.
Nutmeg Nanny
Yay 🙂 I love nutter butter cookies! I can’t wait to use this recipe, bet they taste perfect.
Helga
These look great! The packaged version has way too much”stuff” in it. I am going to try this with an all natural peanut butter and see how it goes.
Madonna/aka/Ms. Lemon
I no longer buy packaged cookies. The all contain lecithin. I no longer buy peanut butter, you guessed it they take out the peanut oil and put in soy lecithin. I now make my own peanut butter and this looks like a delicious way use it. Very clever.
Sandie
These look so much tastier than the store bought kind!