These gluten-free peanut butter cookies are just so easy to make, perfect to bake for kids.
Why This Recipe Works
- Ridiculously easy, one bowl, 4 ingredients.
- Low in sugar thanks to a great baking hack you can use in other recipes.
- 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.
Substitutes
- Peanut butter: This can be substituted for another nut butter such as almond butter or cashew 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, white, brown, raw, caster, coconut.
I am an ambassador for Countdown supermarket, they support my blog by providing ingredients for recipe creation and testing. I used free-range eggs and, desiccated coconut from their range in this recipe.
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 almond 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.
Step one: Place all the ingredients in a bowl and mix
Step two: 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)
Step three: Place the balls on a baking paper lined tray, 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)
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, 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.
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
Ingredients
- 1 Cup peanut butter
- ⅓ cup sugar
- ⅔ cup desiccated coconut
- 1 egg
Instructions
- 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
Tips
- 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, I have used both in this recipe, and both work fine.
- 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.
Ingredient Substitutions
- Peanut butter: This can be substituted for another nut butter such as almond butter or cashew 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, white, brown, raw, caster, coconut.
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.