Only 4 ingredients needed to make these soft & healthy, low carb peanut butter cookies. No mixer needed!
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Diabetic Friendly Cookies
Using honey (or agave or maple syrup) as the sweetener instead of sugar is what makes these cookies low gylcemic and soft. The macronutrients are well balanced, especially for a cookie!
Flour is purposely not used in this recipe to avoid extra carbs and empty nutrition.
If your appetite isn't big enough for a snack, these are a great substitute.
Recipe & Substitutions
Peanut Butter
Question - Can I use any kind of peanut butter?
Answer - There's two schools of thought 🙂 JUST KIDDING - If you know that reference, drop your favorite line in the comments.
I used Skippy smooth peanut butter because that's my preferred brand and texture. Skippy does have added refined sugar, but not much.
You can use any brand or texture you like, but if you use a natural peanut butter that has oil separated on top, be sure to thoroughly mix the peanut butter before combining the ingredients.
Honey
Question - Can I use any kind of honey?
Answer - Yes. I use raw honey that is amber in color, and that's because I like the taste of Nature Nate's. I suggest using the honey you already like, because honey can vary so much in flavor and strength.
If you're new to honey, lighter colored honey (yellow or light gold) has a milder flavor, so you should start there
There's no benefit in using raw honey over processed honey when baking because honey loses its nutritional benefits when heated to a certain temperature.
If you don't enjoy the taste of honey at all, you can substitute maple syrup or agave.
Instructions Clarification
The instructions say to continue mixing the batter until it's fully combined and looks like peanut butter again. The picture below shows the first stage and final stage of mixing.
Mixing takes about 30 seconds.
When placing the batter on the cookie sheet, spread the batter to resemble a cookie because the cookies will just barely spread in the oven. The tops will remain in place as well, as shown below.
To make any cookie soft in texture, the wet ingredients need to outweigh the dry ingredients.
Why?
Because dry ingredients, namely flour and sugar, absorb the moisture from the wet ingredients. If the dry ingredients outweigh the wet ingredients, the texture will be crunchy or crispy, even crumbly if too much is added.
When the wet ingredients (eggs, butter, or other) outweigh the dry ingredients, the texture gets softer.
This recipe doesn't contain any notable dry ingredients, which is why these cookies are soft in texture, even if over baked. So to make soft peanut butter cookies from scratch, follow this recipe.
Any peanut butter that you prefer is good for baking peanut butter cookies.
Since we're going for soft peanut butter cookies, it's best to use a creamy peanut butter.
If you use a natural peanut butter that has oil separated and sitting at the top of the jar, be sure to stir the peanut butter before adding the other ingredients.
Adding flour will make the cookie dough less sticky, but it will harden the cookies' texture, making them crunchy and perhaps crumbly.
Peanut butter is sticky in nature, and with the honey added to these, stickiness is just part of the game.
You can dust your hands and equipment with flour to make handling the dough a bit easier.
Cookies spread mainly based on the amount of spreadable fat in the batter, and also the amount of baking soda.
When it comes to peanut butter cookies, whether soft or hard, the peanut butter is the main inhibitor in the cookies spreading because it acts as a binder - a rather thick and strong binder.
Having a thick binder prevents the cookies from spreading like other cookies do, so the spreading needs to be done before baking.
This is why peanut butter cookies are normally rolled into a ball, then pressed down with a fork - doing so shapes and spreads the cookie.
Recipe
Soft Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe
- 1 each Egg (large)
- 3 Tablespoons Honey
- ¼ teaspoon Baking Soda
- ⅔ cup Creamy Peanut Butter
- Move the rack in the oven to the lowest setting. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Crack the egg into a large bowl and whip it with a fork until scrambled.
- Add the honey to the egg and mix with a fork until well combined.
- Add the baking soda to the egg mixture and mix well with a fork.
- Add the peanut butter to the egg mixture and mix it in with a fork until it's all combined. The entire mixture should look like peanut butter straight out of the jar. If it's not combing, stir rapidly in the opposite direction. Continue to switch directions until combined.
- Scoop 2½ to 3 tablespoons worth of batter onto a metal cookie sheet. Using the back of a spoon or fork, spread the batter into a circle about 2½ to 3 inches wide and ½-inch thick. (The cookies will spread just slightly when baking, so however you spread them by hand will be what they look like after baking.)Scoop all the batter into cookies, placing them at least one inch apart.
- Place the cookie sheet in the oven on the bottom rack and bake for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes, remove the cookie sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to cool on the sheet. When cooled, lift the cookies from the sheet with a spatula.
laken flanary
What is the serving size for this recipe? Thank you.
Traci Houston
Hi Laken, the serving size is 1 cookies. The batch makes 8. Sorry for the delay!