If you've run out of flour, or you can't eat it, you can still make these easy gluten-free flourless peanut butter cookies made with all-natural peanut butter! These easy peanut butter cookies are soft and chewy and made without flour.
Sure, you could substitute gluten-free flour mixes for all-purpose flour in the classic peanut butter cookie recipe or in your favourite giant peanut butter cookies under most circumstances, but that's not what this recipe is about! This recipe is about simplifying the cookie to the most basic ingredients that *most* people will have in their cupboards and their fridges, without a trip to the store.
I tested this small-batch nut butter cookie recipe with all-natural peanut butter, almond butter and even tahini (sesame butter) and sunflower seed butter to show that these flourless cookies can be made with any all-natural nut butter or seed butter you have. And since you make this recipe by hand with just a bowl and a spoon, it's a great activity to do with kids!
Jump to:
- Why Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies Work
- Ingredients
- Substitutions and Variations
- Flourless Peanut Butter Cookie Formula
- How to Make Peanut Butter Cookies Without Flour
- Pro Tip: How to Mix a Jar of All-Natural Peanut Butter
- Flourless Cookies Without Peanut Butter: Almond Butter, Sunflower Seed Butter, or Tahini
- Peanut Butter Cookie FAQs
- More Peanut Butter Recipes
- 📖 Recipe
Why Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies Work
Developing a flourless cookie is tricky, given that the role of flour in baking is so important. You can't just omit the flour and expect a cookie recipe to perform as usual. This is where ground nuts and nut butters come in handy.
Nuts are a combination of fat, fibre, and protein, so smooth nut butters can actually replace both the flour and the butter in a cookie recipe by providing structure and fat to cookies.
Ingredients
The best part about making peanut butter cookies is you probably have everything you need:
- peanut butter—I prefer to use all-natural peanut butter for these cookies made from roasted peanuts, but raw peanut butter will also work as well as regular peanut butter.
- sugar—both brown sugar and white sugar work in this recipe.
- egg—use a large egg for these cookies.
- salt—use Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt or use half the amount if using regular table salt. If your peanut butter is salted, omit the salt.
- baking soda—read about baking soda versus baking powder if you aren't sure the difference.
Please see the recipe card for the exact ingredients and quantities.
Substitutions and Variations
As I mentioned above, I did a lot of recipe testing to show how versatile this recipe is:
- Peanut butter: this recipe works with natural peanut butter (made from only peanuts) and also regular peanut butter (containing sugar, salt, and other oils/fats to prevent the oil from separating).
- Nut butter alternatives without peanuts: this recipe works with cashew butter and almond butter.
- Seed butter alternatives: this recipe works with tahini and sunflower seed butter. If using tahini, do not press down the scoops of cookie dough with a fork as they spread a lot.
- Sugar: both white sugar and brown sugar work in this recipe, though brown sugar yields a slightly thicker cookie that spreads a little less.
- Salt: don't add salt if you are using a nut butter that contains salt.
I tested this flourless peanut butter cookie recipe with two different brands of natural peanut butter that had differing fat contents to make sure it works. I tested with Kraft natural peanut butter with sea salt, and a grocery store brand of natural peanut butter.
In all cases, I felt I got the best flavour using a single nut butter, instead of a combination of nut butters, or a combination of nut butter and ground almond. Combining a nut butter with another nut just diluted the flavour and made the cookies bland.
Flourless Peanut Butter Cookie Formula
The classic flourless peanut butter cookie recipe formula is 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 large egg. This is the recipe published for Kraft regular peanut butter (the no-stir kind that has sugar and salt added, as well as some hydrogenated fats to prevent fat separation).
The bakery Ovenly in NYC developed a variation on this recipe and published in their book (available on Amazon). Their flourless peanut butter cookie formula is 1-¾ cups peanut butter, 1-¾ cups sugar, and 2 large eggs. Ovenly recommends using Skippy for their recipe, which is also a no-stir peanut butter with sugar, salt, and hydrogenated oil added. Ovenly doesn't recommend using all-natural peanut butter for their recipe.
I used these recipes as inspiration when I worked on this version of peanut butter cookies without flour, testing it with regular and natural peanut butter, as well as almond butter, sesame seed butter (tahini), and sunflower seed butter so that you have a couple of nut-free cookie options.
How to Make Peanut Butter Cookies Without Flour
You can make these gluten-free peanut butter cookies in a bowl with a wooden spoon, but the dough is quite stiff so you may prefer to use an electric hand mixer.
Step 1: Combine the peanut butter with the egg first (image 1) and mix them together until the mixture becomes very thick (image 2). Add the sugar, salt, and baking soda, and stir it in (image 3). I like to switch to a plastic bowl scraper to make mixing this thick cookie dough a little easier (image 4).
Step 2: Scoop the dough using a ¾ ounce disher (image 5). The scoops will weigh 30 grams each. Then, press them down with a fork to flatten them out a little and leave a crisis cross pattern (image 6).
Note: if you are making these cookies with tahini (sesame butter) or regular peanut butter (the kind with sugar), do not press down the scoops of cookie dough with a fork because they spread too much. Also freeze the scoops for 15 minutes before baking them to slow the spread.
Step 3: You should fit eight cookies per half-sheet pan (image 7) and bake them until set (image 8).
Pro Tip: How to Mix a Jar of All-Natural Peanut Butter
It's very important that, when you open a jar of any natural nut butter, you have to mix it very well to get the nut oil combined and evenly distributed with the solids. If your nut butter has too much or too little oil, the cookies will spread too much or end up more dry and crumbly.
There's no denying it: all-natural peanut butter is a real pain to use because the oil separates to the top of the jar as the product sits. This goes for all other natural nut butters, tahini, and nut-free butters made from seeds. You need to stir vigorously to get the nut butter properly mixed and to do so, you have a few options:
- by hand: roll up your sleeves and stir vigorously for over 5 minutes with a big sturdy spoon. This will be messy if the jar is very full. Sometimes I use a long knife to do the stirring (or the handle of a wooden spoon) to dig up the peanut butter caked onto the bottom of the jar.
- by gravity: invert the jar and let gravity do the work. This works fairly well, but I still find that it needs to be stirred by hand regardless.
- using a small appliance: use an immersion blender (hand blender) or an electric hand mixer with one beater directly in the jar to mix the oil with the solids. This works really great, but there's a big risk you lose control. The oil may splash out of the jar at first. Make sure to grip the jar tightly. Otherwise, you may lose control, spilling peanut oil everywhere. Alternatively, transfer the nut butter to a bowl to mix the two layers then transfer it back to the jar.
Once mixed, store nut butter in the fridge, which slows down the separation of the layers. Unfortunately, you will have to stir natural peanut butter every time you use it.
Flourless Cookies Without Peanut Butter: Almond Butter, Sunflower Seed Butter, or Tahini
I also tested this recipe with an all-natural roasted almond butter to make flourless almond butter cookies, tahini to make sesame cookies, and sunflower seed butter to make sunflower seed butter cookies.
Almond butter and sunflower seed butter perform similarly. You can make cookies with either almond or sunflower seed butter exactly as in the instructions, replacing one nut butter with the other. Please note that the colour of the cookies is different. Almond butter made darker brown cookies and sunflower seed butter made cookies with a green tint.
Tahini is more liquidy and the flourless tahini cookies spread more in the oven. For this reason, if you use tahini in this recipe, DO NOT press down the scoops of cookie dough and don't use a fork to make a fork pattern like you would classic peanut butter cookies. Please leave the cookie dough scoops be, as is. I used all-natural tahini from the brand Alkaneter (you can find it on Amazon).
Peanut Butter Cookie FAQs
For peanut butter to be labelled as peanut butter in the US, it has to contain at least 90 % of peanuts. This means that the variation from brand to brand, and product to product, is from the remaining 10 %. The only ingredients added in American peanut butters are salt, sweeteners, and vegetable oils, and these ingredients cannot account for more than 10 % of the product. Anything else, and the product can't be labelled as peanut butter.
All-natural peanut butter contains only ground peanuts. Some brands may have added salt for flavour, but that's the only extra ingredient you might find in all-natural peanut butter. Since all-natural peanut butter is made from peanuts only, any nutritional variation would come from the variety of peanut used, but also if any oils were added to grind the nuts into a smooth consistency.
Regular peanut butter is made from ground peanuts, as well as hydrogenated fats (which are solid at room temperature), which help to homogenize the product so that the oil doesn't separate. The hydrogenated oils also give the product a thick, spreadable consistency at room temperature.
If your nut butter is labelled as "no-stir" or if it doesn't have a layer of oil on the top of the jar, it has additives to ensure the product is shelf-stable and to keep it evenly mixed, even at room temperature.
I tested this recipe with Kraft regular peanut butter (the kind that doesn't require stirring and that has sugar, salt, and hydrogenated oils added to it). It works, BUT you have to chill/freeze the cookie dough for 15 minutes to reduce spreading. I did this in the freezer. So once you scoop the cookie dough and form smooth balls, place the cookies on a plate and freeze them for 15 minutes. Bake them at 325 ºF like the other cookies, adjusting the time according to how they are looking.
With regular peanut butter, you will notice these cookies spread more, which is why you don't press them before baking! Also, I haven't tested this recipe with other brands of regular peanut butter, so I can't say how these will react to different brands. I'd expect that other peanut butters will behave similarly.
Sunflower seed butter is prone to oxidation where it changes colour from a greige to a green-ish tint. This can also happen when the pH is high. Given that there is baking soda in the cookie dough, it's possible that the cookies will turn green when the sunflower seed butter comes into contact with the baking soda and heats up in the oven.
Recall that baking soda is a base (meaning it's alkaline) and sunflower seed butter contains a compound called chlorogenic acid. In the presence of a base, one molecule of chlorogenic acid will react with another molecule of chlorogenic acid and dimerize, forming coloured complexes with proteins. When this happens, your baked goods turn green. Your cookies will still be edible, but if you've ever baked with sunflower seed butter, this could happen if your recipe includes baking soda. Here's a reference from the literature on the colour change of chlorogenic acid in sunflower seeds.
Don't forget, if for whatever reason, you have extra flourless peanut butter cookies or if they spread too much (or too little) for your liking, you can always chop them up into small pieces and fold them into ice cream to make cookie ice cream!
More Peanut Butter Recipes
Everybody loves peanut butter. If you want to bake more with this star ingredient, try these classic peanut butter cookies (for comparison), peanut butter swirl brownies, or these giant white chocolate peanut butter cookies. You can also turn peanut butter into the most delicious peanut butter frosting to decorate a chocolate cake.
If you tried this recipe for flourless peanut butter cookies (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!
📖 Recipe
Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
- 255 grams all natural, unsweetened smooth peanut butter or 250 grams all-natural almond butter or 250 grams tahini, room temperature, SEE NOTE
- 1 large egg(s)
- 200 grams light brown sugar
- 5 mL Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt OPTIONAL, if your nut butter has no salt added SEE NOTE (or use 2.5 mL (½ tsp) table salt)
- 1.25 mL baking soda
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 °F (165 ºC). Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper
- To a large bowl, add the all-natural peanut butter with the egg. With a wooden spoon, stir vigorously until the mixture forms a thick paste.
- Sprinkle the brown sugar, the salt, and the baking soda over top. Stir very well to evenly distribute the ingredients until you form cookie dough.
- Scoop 30 gram portions of dough and roll each into a ball. Place 8 per cookie sheet, leaving a few inches between each.
- With a fork, press down the dough to form the classic criss cross pattern of peanut butter cookies. Note for tahini, leave the balls of cookie dough as is and DO NOT press down at all!
- Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for about 15 minutes, until the bottom edges begin to brown lightly.
- Let the cookies cool completely before transferring to store them in a container.
Notes
- "Natural" nut butters tend to separate as they sit, with the solids sticking to the bottom of the container and the oil floating to the top. Make sure to scrape, stir, and shake well before measuring to ensure a good mix of both components. Before measuring out your nut butter, mix it thoroughly and scrape up any ground nuts from the bottom of the jar. Once the jar is well mixed, THEN you can measure it out, but only then!
- If your nut butter already has salt, do not add the salt! For example, I've tested this recipe with an all-natural peanut butter made with sea salt. It is plenty salty and so with this nut butter, I don't add more salt.
- For tahini cookies, DO NOT press down the scoops of dough at all. The tahini dough as is will spread plenty. For other nut butters (peanut butter and almond butter), you need to press down the dough with your palm or a fork to help it along.
- If you find your cookies spread to much, next time, use *slightly* less nut butter: the same recipe works with 220 grams (1 cup–2 tbsp) of nut butter or tahini. I tested it! The cookies spread slightly less!
- Please note these cookies were baked at 325 °F (165 °C), which is 25–50 °F (10 °C) less than most cookies. Otherwise, I found the cookies scorched on the bottom, as you can see in the photo above of natural vs regular peanut butter where the underside of the cookies are quite dark
- Substitutions:
- replace the egg with a chia egg that is 2.5 tablespoon water + 1 tablespoon ground chia. You can also use ground flax to make a flax egg if you prefer.
- replace the brown sugar with regular granulated sugar, or a mixture of the two.
- This recipe calls for Diamond Crystal fine Kosher salt. If using regular table salt, add half the amount or the recipe may be too salty!
Nutrition
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