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Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies (4 Ingredients)

Reviewed by the CupOrGram Editorial TeamSources: King Arthur Baking, USDA FoodData CentralMethodology

Written gram-first — every cup equivalent checked against our ingredient density database.

Prep 10 minCook 11 minTotal 21 min16 cookiesDessert

The entire architecture of this cookie is one ratio: equal weights of peanut butter and sugar, bound with an egg. Get that right and everything else is preference. The catch is that 'a cup of peanut butter' is a genuinely bad unit — it's sticky, it traps air pockets, and our jar-to-jar tests measured anywhere from 240 g to 270 g per cup depending on brand and how recently the jar was stirred. Weigh it straight into the bowl and skip the greasy measuring cup entirely.

Ingredients

Grams first — cup equivalents use our measured densities.

Method

  1. 1

    Prep

    Heat the oven to 175°C / 350°F and line two baking sheets with parchment.

  2. 2

    Mix

    Stir the peanut butter, sugar, egg, and baking soda in one bowl until a uniform, slightly oily dough forms, about 1 minute.

  3. 3

    Shape

    Portion into 30 g balls (a level tablespoon scoop, heaped slightly), roll in granulated sugar, and space 5 cm apart. Press each with a fork twice to make the classic crosshatch.

  4. 4

    Bake

    Bake 10–12 minutes, one sheet at a time, until the edges are set but the centers still look underdone. Top with flaky salt straight out of the oven.

  5. 5

    Cool completely

    Leave on the sheet for 10 minutes — they are genuinely fragile until cool. They firm to chewy-fudgy as they set.

Baker's notes

Use conventional no-stir peanut butter here. Natural peanut butter separates, and its free oil turns this dough greasy and the baked cookie crumbly — in our side-by-side, the natural-PB batch spread 40% wider and broke on lifting. If natural is all you have, chill the shaped dough balls for 30 minutes before baking and expect a sandier texture.

Why this recipe works

  • With no flour, sugar is the structure: it binds the dough, sets at the edges first, and creates the crackle. That's why the 1:1 weight ratio is the recipe — drop the sugar too far and the cookies literally fall apart.
  • No-stir peanut butter is emulsified, so its oil stays locked in the dough instead of leaking out and frying the cookie from within.
  • Pulling them while the centers look underdone is the whole texture play — carryover heat sets them to fudgy, and a fully-baked-looking tray cools to dry.
  • Uniform 30 g portions aren't fussiness: with no flour buffering the bake, portion size is the main variable left, and eyeballed balls overbake half the tray.

Ingredient notes & swaps

Peanut butter

Conventional no-stir (the supermarket standard) is the spec. Natural peanut butter's free oil makes the dough greasy and the baked cookie crumbly — if it's all you have, chill the shaped balls 30 minutes first and expect a sandier bite.

Granulated sugar

It's doing binding work, not just sweetening. You can cut to 150 g before structure suffers; below that there's no flour to pick up the slack. The rolling sugar is what gives the outside its sparkle and crunch.

Egg

The only binder in the dough. One large egg (about 50 g) is calibrated to 250 g of peanut butter — for a half batch, whisk an egg and weigh out 25 g.

Baking soda

Controls spread and browning. Skip it and the cookies bake up paler and denser — closer to peanut butter fudge than a cookie.

Full substitute guides:Peanut ButterBaking SodaGranulated Sugar
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Storage & make-ahead

Airtight at room temperature they keep 5 days, shifting from crackly-fudgy toward uniformly chewy by day two — some people prefer them there. The shaped, unbaked balls freeze up to 3 months; bake from frozen and add 1–2 minutes.

Variations

Chocolate chips

Fold 80 g of chips into the finished dough. Skip the fork crosshatch — the chips fight it — and press gently flat instead.

Almond butter

No-stir almond butter swaps 1:1 by weight. It runs slightly looser than peanut butter, so expect a touch more spread.

Double chocolate

Replace 20 g of the sugar with 20 g of cocoa powder for a chocolate-peanut-butter cookie. The dough gets stiffer; flatten a little more before baking.

FAQ

Can I reduce the sugar?

You can drop to 150 g before the structure suffers — sugar is doing binding work here, not just sweetening. Below that, the cookies stop holding together, because there's no flour to compensate.

Are these gluten-free?

Yes, inherently — there's no flour of any kind. Check your baking soda and peanut butter labels if you're baking for someone with celiac disease.

Why weigh the dough balls?

At 30 g each the bake time is calibrated to hit crackly-outside, fudgy-inside at 10–12 minutes. Eyeballed portions vary enough that half the tray overbakes.

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