Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies
These gluten-free peanut butter cookies are just so easy to make, perfect to bake for kids. They are my take on the classic 3 ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe.
Why This Recipe Works
- Ridiculously easy, one bowl, 4 simple ingredients.
- A no flour recipe
- Low in sugar thanks to a great baking hack you can use in other recipes.
- Soft and chewy and loaded with peanut butter yumminess.
Ingredients you will need
To make my gluten-free peanut butter cookies you will need just 4 ingredients: Peanut butter, egg, desiccated coconut and sugar.
Ingredient Notes and Substitutes
- Peanut butter: This can be substituted for other nut butters such as almond butter or cashew butter. I use natural peanut butter, i.e. a peanut butter that only includes 2 ingredients, peanuts and salt. No emulsifiers or additional oils.
- Desiccated coconut: If you do not wish to use desiccated coconut you can increase the sugar to 1 cup of sugar. Or the coconut can be substituted with ground almonds/almond flour/almond meal.
- Sugar: This recipe will work with any granulated sugar, including; brown sugar, raw sugar, caster sugar or coconut.
- Optional Flavourings: The peanut butter flavor of this recipe can be enhanced with a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla extract can also be a nice addition.
Substitutes
- Peanut butter: This can be substituted for another nut butter or seed butter such as almond butter sunflower seed butter.
- Desiccated coconut: If you do not wish to use desiccated coconut you can increase the sugar to 1 cup of sugar. Or the coconut can be substituted with ground almonds.
- Sugar: This recipe will work with any granulated sugar, including; brown sugar, raw sugar, caster sugar or coconut.
How to easily reduce the sugar content of most baking recipes
I have used one of my favourite sugar-reducing baking techniques in this recipe, it works for pretty much all recipes.
Essentially you can halve or reduce the sugar content of most recipes by two-thirds and substitute the sugar with desiccated coconut.
If the traditional recipe calls for one cup of sugar, you can reduce it to either half a cup of sugar and add in half a cup of desiccated coconut or reduce the sugar even further to one-third of a cup while substituting in two-thirds of a cup of desiccated coconut.
You get the picture. The original peanut butter cookie recipe I started with was a one-cup peanut butter to one-cup sugar recipe.
But I tested my sugar coconut swap, and the recipe works brilliantly with only one-third of a cup of sugar.
Try my coconut sugar swap in other recipes, it tends to work most of the time. You can also use ground almonds as a substitute too.
I use this hack in my lemon loaf, feijoa loaf and feijoa muffins. If you are on the hunt for healthy cookie recipes for kids I have quite a few on my website and my peanut butter and jelly cookies take this recipe to another level.
Step by step instructions
Below are illustrated step-by-step instructions to make my gluten-free peanut butter cookies, if you prefer just the written instructions then head straight to the printable recipe card below.
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Prep: Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (360 F).
Step one: Place all the ingredients in a bowl and stir until a sticky dough is formed.
Step two: Use a tablespoon or cookie scoop to portion the cookie dough, and then roll into balls. balls. The dough may be a little sticky, but if you wet your hands it will stop it from sticking (you should end up with approximately 20 cookies)
Step three: Place the balls on a baking paper lined baking sheets, gently press the balls with a fork to form cookies.
Step four: Bake at 180 degrees Celsius (360 F) for 12-15 minutes (I would set the timer for 10 minutes though, and then check again at 12 minutes and 15 minutes just to be certain).
Allow the cookies to cool on the tray then transfer to a wire rack, the cookies will be soft when they first come out of the oven, but they will harden as they cool
Top Tips
Here is how you can make these gluten free peanut butter cookies perfectly every time!
- If your cookie dough sticks to your spoon or hand when you are trying to roll them into balls, dampen the spoon and your hands, this will stop the dough from sticking.
- Don't forget to try out the desiccated coconut hack I use for reducing sugar content in baking for some of your other favourite recipes.
- Crunchy or smooth peanut butter, I have used both in this recipe, and both work fine.
FAQs
Peanuts and therefore peanut butter are considered to be gluten-free. Peanuts do not naturally contain gluten. therefore peanut butter is gluten free unless an additional gluten containing ingredient has been added, it does there fore pacy to check the ingredient label.
These cookies will last up to 10 days in an air-tight container in your pantry. That's if they don't get gobbled up before then! They can also be frozen in an airtight container.
Yes, the cookies will be soft when they first come out of the oven, but they will harden as they cool.
The main reason peanut butter cookies crumble is the wrong ratio of peanut butter to dry ingredients. You can try increasing the peanut butter by one to two tablespoons. Additionally, check the ingredients in your peanut butter, if your peanut butter contains more than peanuts and salt this could affect the texture of the final cookies.
Great tasting and easy to make gluten-free cookies can be hard to come by, my gluten-free vegan cookies are new on the blog, they are a delicious chocolate chip cookie recipe that is free from gluten, egg, dairy, soy and nuts.
Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies
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Ingredients
- 270 grams peanut butter One Cup
- 75 grams sugar One-third cup
- 60 grams desiccated coconut Two-thirds cup
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (360 F).
- Place all the ingredients in a bowl and mix
- Use a tablespoon to portion the cookie dough, and then roll into balls. balls. The dough may be a little sticky, but if you wet your hands it will stop it from sticking (you should end up with approximately 20 cookies)
- Place the balls on a baking paper lined tray, gently press the balls with a fork to form cookies
- Bake at 180 degrees Celsius (360 F) for 12-15 minutes (I would set the timer for 10 minutes though, and then check again at 12 minutes and 15 minutes just to be certain)
Notes
- These cookies will last up to 10 days in an air-tight container in your pantry. That's if they don't get gobbled up before then! They can also be frozen in an airtight container.
- These cookies will last up to 10 days in an air-tight container in your pantry. That's if they don't get gobbled up before then! They can also be frozen in an airtight container.
- If your cookie dough sticks to your spoon or hand when you are trying to roll them into balls, dampen the spoon and your hands, this will stop the dough from sticking.
- Don't forget to try out the desiccated coconut hack I use for reducing sugar content in baking for some of your other favourite recipes.
- Crunchy or smooth peanut butter, I have used both in this recipe, and both work fine.
- Peanut butter: This can be substituted for another nut butter or seed butter such as almond butter sunflower seed butter.
- Desiccated coconut: If you do not wish to use desiccated coconut you can increase the sugar to 1 cup of sugar. Or the coconut can be substituted with ground almonds.
- Sugar: This recipe will work with any granulated sugar, including; brown sugar, raw sugar, caster sugar or coconut.
Nutrition
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Hi just wondering if these would freeze well? Or what kind of shelf life would they have. Thanks
Hi yes they freeze really well, I store them in an airtight container for 3-5 days
These were a total hit here! I had 3 little helpers trying to 'help' me and these were perfect since it was enough for them to mix the ingredients and press the fork, and took 5 minutes (so I stayed sane) ?? Very tasty too.
Hi, I was wondering if yo have ever tried using honey instead of sugar in this recipe?
Hi there, I haven't with this recipe, it would work, but you may need to up the dry ingredients as the mix will be a bit wetter.
This looks yummy, but I wondered what would be a suitable substitute for the egg here to make it vegan? Thank you x
Hi, sorry in this recipe I don't have a vegan alternative if you search my site though I do have other vegan cookies including my vegan cinnamon cookies.
Made these yesterday and they're super easy and tasty. The dough wasn't sticky either. Being a novice I probably placed the cookies a bit too close on the tray so when they baked some were stuck to the other. I may have to reduce the sugar further though. This was a practice run 🙂 Thanks for the recipe!
These are delicious! I made them with shredded coconut and a flax egg, and they still came out perfect. Super tasty and didn't miss the extra sugar at all. Thank you for an allergy-friendly recipe! Adding this to our family cookbook 🙂
Really tasty and easy
Satisfying, I love using coconut in cookies this way. Thanks for making it simple and providing great info 🙂