Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Sablé Cookies

Easy, healthy recipe for melt-in-the-mouth cookies made with crunchy peanut butter, dark chocolate chips and reduced in sugar. In the style of shortbread or French sablés.

Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies

It’s already the second week of the mid-term school winter holidays. The children have had a ball with sleep-overs, ‘hanging out’ chez les amis (‘playing’ is now banned from our silly adult vocabulary.) On return from their friends’ homes, they described what they had for dinner and, top of the list, what was for goûter at 4pm official French snack time. They raved about their friends’ homemade cookies.
“You know, Mum, they made the most incredible cookies; they made them all by themselves; these cookies were the most incredible biscuits we’ve ever had. They put chocolate chips in them, M&Ms, marshmallows…
Why don’t we ever make cookies like them?”

WHAT?! Ah bon. I could feel myself standing to my full height. After all the choux buns, éclairs, financiers, tigrés, crêpes, tarts and mille-feuilles (recipes for all of them in Teatime in Paris), chocolate fondants, pancakes, and stacks of macarons – my kids have never actually made homemade cookies? What kind of a mum is that? Wait a minute, we have melting moments together, don’t we? Yes, but they don’t include chocolate chips.

When I mentioned the reaction to the friends’ cookies, my Mum burst into hysterics. Apparently, I’m Granny’s double: Mum used to come home from a friend’s house, also raving about what she’d eaten there and my Granny would throw a wobbly with the kids. Nobody could be better than my proud, Scottish Granny. What? She served you tinned mandarines and you think that’s better than what you get here? I didn’t even realise that I demonstrated the same. Exactly the same. Thanks, Mum.

So, you want cookies like your friends? I’ll give you cookies.

Melt-in-the-mouth peanut buttery cookies – a bit like French sablés.

Easy Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Cookies for Kids

To make it up to them for a cookie-less Mum, I needed inspiration from my blogging friends for cookies that used peanut butter. You see, Julie has just discovered peanut butter – as peanut butter is not something the French normally keep in their store cupboards. I hear you: I’m a Scot – but I’m more French these days (for better or for worse).

I found many super peanut butter recipes from Tina of Flourtrader, from Liz of That Skinny Chick Can Bake, and another recipe at Sweets by Sillianah. My problem (one of them) is that so many US recipes deal in cups; I prefer grams like in France and the UK and so we wildly adapted a mix of several recipes and came up with this. Since then, I’ve tweaked the dosage to make it more like shortbread or a French sablé.

The girls did a great job. The texture wasn’t too soft or crispy either, even if we could have upped the peanut butter, I prefer how it’s subtle and gives enough crunch and saltiness. No need to use an electric mixer: the children wanted a hands-on approach, which is much more fun – and an arm workout as holiday sport!

They’re melt-in-the-mouth, not too sweet, have an appealing saltiness to them, and they’re well, compulsive eating.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chip Sablé Cookies

Author: Jill Colonna

Prep Time15 mins

Cook Time12 mins

Total Time27 mins

Course : teatime, Party Food

Cuisine : British

Keyword : peanut butter cookies, peanut butter chocolate

Servings : 30 cookies

Print Recipe

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Description

Easy, healthy recipe for melt-in-the-mouth cookies made with crunchy or smooth peanut butter, dark chocolate chips and reduced in sugar. In the style of shortbread or French sablés. Great for baking with kids.

Ingredients

• 125 g (4.5oz) butter, unsalted softened
• 50 g (2oz) sugar
• 25 g (1oz) light brown sugar (cane sugar)*
• 1 egg organic
• 100 g (3.5oz) peanut butter crunchy or smooth
• good pinch salt (fleur de sel)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 110 g (4oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla powder
• 100 g (3.5oz) dark chocolate chips

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/360°F/Gas 4 and line a couple of baking sheets with baking parchment or a silicone mat.
• In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars* with a good spatula until the sugar has disappeared and the mix is pale and creamy. Gradually add in the rest of the ingredients, mixing well. (The dough can be frozen at this point if you don't use all of it.)
• Spoon out small portions of the mixture on the baking sheets, leaving a good gap in between each as they spread out.

  If you like cookies slightly crispy on the outside, then flatten them slightly with a fork and bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Otherwise leave them as little mounds.
• When cooled, transfer the cookies to a wire rack.

Notes

* I love to use a mixture of the sugars: using a little light brown cane sugar adds that crunch to the texture. However, 75g/3oz of one kind is good too.