If you’re a chocolate peanut butter fan, I will guarantee that these Peanutella Stuffed Brown Butter Chocolate Chip cookies will knock your socks off. Stuffed cookies are always an outstanding idea, especially when chocolate and peanut butter are involved!
In spite of the ridiculously long name of this recipe, these peanutella stuffed brown butter and sea salt chocolate chip cookies won’t last as long in your house as it takes for you to say the recipe’s name.
They are insanely delicious cookies.
I know this recipe has been exploding around the blogs in the past few weeks but I decided to change things up a little. I nixed the Nutella from the original recipe! I know, blasphemy, right?
But Kyle’s tree nut allergy doesn’t allow Nutella in our house so I stuffed these cookies with my homemade peanutella. How bad could that be??
What Is Peanutella?
Peanutella is a chocolate peanut butter spread. It’s sort of like a mash up of Reese’s peanut butter cups in a spreadable form. And it’s creamy, rich, and addictive!
If you’ve had Nutella or a similar hazelnut spread, you’ll see that peanutella has the same smooth and creamy consistency as Nutella.
Allergy Issues?
If you’ve got tree nut allergies in your family like we do in ours, this peanutella is a fantastic way around that allergy issue. Nutella is made with hazelnuts so it’s definitely a no-no where tree nut allergies are concerned.
But being made with only peanut butter, this spread works for those who don’t have peanut allergies! For us, that means that Kyle can eat it and man, does that make him happy!!
How to Stuff Cookies
There are lots of different stuffed cookies out there, including the famous S’mores Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies that I made years ago. For those cookies, I literally stuffed full-size s’mores into the center of a giant ball of cookie dough and baked them off.
Stuffing these cookies is a little different since the chocolate peanut butter is really soft. You’ll need to freeze the peanutella in teaspoon-size dollops so it firms up enough to stuff into cookies.
Then you’ll wrap brown butter chocolate chip cookie dough around the frozen dollops. And that makes your stuffed cookies!
After you bake them up, you’ll sprinkle some sea salt over the tops of the cookies. The salt “garnish” helps to balance all the sweet in the cookie and without a doubt, boosts these cookies from great to spectacular.
We’re expecting a giant snowstorm here in New England this weekend so these cookies will be happening again imminently. But dare I say that it’s possible they may overtake the spot of our very favorite cookie and will show up more frequently here in the future? Who knows?
More Chocolate Peanut Butter Recipes that You will Definitely Love
- Fudgy Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
- Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie
- No Churn Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream
- Peanut Butter Cup Hot Fudge Banana Bread
- Peanut Butter Truffles
Peanutella Stuffed Brown Butter & Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies
Peanutella stuffed brown butter chocolate chip cookies will blow any regular chocolate chip cookie out of the water. After eating these, you may never go back to regular cookies again! The brown butter chocolate chip cookies are stuffed with creamy chocolate peanut butter spread, called peanutella. They're dreamy and delicious! To get this out of the way now: yes, you can use Nutella in place of the peanutella I strongly suggest you use here.
Ingredients
- ½ cup peanutella (chocolate peanut butter spread)
- 1 cup (16 tbsp or 2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ¼ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp coarse sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling (see Note below)
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp greek yogurt or sour cream
- 1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Freeze teaspoon-size dollops of the peanutella on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 1 to 2 hours. I keep mine peanutella in the fridge so it was cold to start with and only really needed an hour to firm up.
- Meanwhile, place the butter in a medium to large skillet over medium heat. Allow the butter to melt completely and continue to cook, whisking frequently, until the butter foams, bubbles slightly, and begins to brown. Continue whisking and swirling the butter in the pan until the butter is evenly browned, being careful not to burn. Remove from the heat, transfer the butter to a heatproof bowl and set it aside to cool.
- Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk the flour, baking soda and coarse sea salt together in a medium bowl; set aside. In the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the sugars and the brown butter together on medium speed until well-combined - it should be fairly smooth. Beat in the egg and egg yolk, scraping down the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and greek yogurt/sour cream and mix until combined. Carefully add in the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until just incorporated. Mix in the chocolate chips. Chill the dough in the bowl briefly, about 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350° F towards the end of the chill period. Use a medium dough scoop (about 2 tablespoons) to scoop out portions of cookie dough onto the baking sheets. Working with a dozen pieces of dough at a time, press an indentation into the center of the dough balls with your thumb to create a bowl shape.
- Drop a dollop of the frozen peanutella into each of the indentations and pinch together the edges of the cookie dough over the top to completely seal it in the center, leaving a little bit of irregularity in the top of the dough as you place them back on the baking sheet. Keep the rest of the peanutella frozen while you seal up these cookies. Space the dough balls 2-3 inches apart on the baking sheets - I baked 8 per sheet.
- Bake each sheet of cookies until they are golden brown and just set, rotating the pans halfway through, about 14 minutes total. When the cookies are finished baking, sprinkle lightly with additional sea salt. Let sit a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Notes
I sprinkled the cookies with extra coarse sea salt - I felt that it made a bigger impact that supported the intent of using sea salt to begin with. If you only have coarse or regular sea salt, use either of those instead. I wanted a "punch" of salt with these otherwise super sweet cookies, but I used coarse sea salt in the cookie dough, not extra coarse.
adapted from Ambitious Kitchen via Annie's Eats
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I need these cookies in my life so badlyyyy
Oh my gosh, those cookies look perfect! I’m not crazy about Nutella (like, at all) so I love your twist.
These sound fantastic!!
Our families back in New England are on lock down…full red alert. Bread? Check! Milk? Check! These cookies? They need to check!
Heaven! These wouldn’t last an afternoon at my house!
These look amazing! What a beautiful combination of flavors. I love the thought of anything ‘stuffed’, especially cookies. 😉