These Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies will take you to unexpected places! They’re versatile and carry almost any flavor you put on them. In this guide I include tips to make it your own. Bonus Point! They’re very rich, so you may have them for dessert for a few days and not get bored of the variety!

I love Alicia’s Peanut butter Cookies, they’re a thing of beauty, she uses crunchy peanut butter which adds a little more bite and texture. She made them a few weeks ago and I’ve been itching to put them on the blog, while at the same time satisfy the craving for playing with flavors.

A few years ago, Gourmet Magazine published an interview with a chef who mentioned how well Peanut Butter goes with chocolate (as well as chocolate and foie gras), and it stuck with me. It makes sense, they’re both strong flavors, last long, and aren’t overly sweet, which lend themselves to pairing with sweet and savory flavors very easily. I coated all my cookies in an even layer of ganache (baker’s chocolate 52% cocoa and scalded cream) so it would cover easily, and any other flavorings I put could stay coating the cookie, not running around the place and away from my mouth.

Salted Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

Starting things simple! Who doesnt love salted chocolate!??

These cookies were great, mixing the chocolate and peanut butter brought both flavors together, and the salt (kosher or sea salt) just heightened the chocolate! It’s also the same reason Sea Salt Caramel works so well….I’m looking at you Starbucks!

I used Baker’s chocolate and scalded cream for my Ganache. But you can use semi-sweet chocolate chips just as well. And since I wanted to have a little bit more control over my ganache, a sweet double boiler was called into play.

Double boiler = bain marie = steam bath = glass bowl over sauce pot with water to provide a gentle heat and not burn the hell out of delicate things…like chocolate!

The trick is thus: double boiler melts chocolate slightly, add scalded cream to melt further, and with a silicone spatula incorporate both until you get a shiny chocolate sauce.

Basically what a hug feels like.

Orange Zest and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

On to the Orange!! Its another common flavor decision to pair chocolate and oranges together. Walk into any french bakery in New York in the middle of Winter and they’ll have those lovely candied orange slices coated in chocolate. I wanted to recreate that. The refreshing notes of the orange peel against the backdrop of velvety chocolate.

It works. Use a Microplane to get the good stuff out of the orange peel and your cookies will thank you for it. Also, it looks purdyyyy!

Toasted Coconut Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

Chocolate and coconut works. Toasted Coconut just adds even move to the experience by being all crunchy and aromatic. Toast a lot of sweetened coconut flakes in a nonstick pan and keep stirring until its crunchy.

Thyme and Orange Zest Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

So go with me on this one…

You get the sweetness of the orange peel, the nuttiness of the peanut butter cookie, and then comes the thyme, woodsy.

It’s definitely a grown up kind of cookie, complex, sweet but not too sweet, and it commands your attention. And that’s precisely what I was looking for, something sweet but not boring, with a bit of the unexpected and enough complexity to keep things interesting.

Tried any of these? Leave me a comment and let me know! I want to talk cookies with you!