Aquafaba Peanut Butter Cookies

I feel confident when I say that these Aquafaba peanut butter cookies are the best cookies ever. The texture is perfect, they’re sweet and a little bit crunchy, they’re very easy to whip up, and you can get all the ingredients at a bulk store. If you’re working on reducing the waste generated in your kitchen, or if you’re just looking for a delicious cookie, these are for you!

Before we get to the recipe, a quick note on peanut butter.

Friends, I beseech you – choose natural peanut butter. Not just one that says “natural” on the jar, but one that has only one ingredient; peanuts. Ideally, any nut or seed butter should have only one ingredient. Of course that doesn’t mean that’s how you have to eat it. If you like it salty, add salt! (Or a little dab of miso paste, this is my favourite). If you want to make it sweet, and something sweet! But please, avoid the hydrogenated oils, palm oil, and other things that are added to peanut butters to keep them shelf-stable, homogenized, and hyper-palatable.

It might help to be reminded that our taste preferences are trained. If you’ve been eating Skippy or Jiff all your life, switching to natural peanut butter may be unappealing at first. I’ve been there! But I promise, if you’re invested in making the switch, either because you’re trying to cut out added and hydrogenated oils, or because you’re transitioning to shopping more from bulk stores, you will grow to love it, and even to prefer it.

But what about separation?

I’ve found two things can help combat the separation that sometimes occurs with natural peanut butter.

1. Buy peanut butter from a place where they grind it on the spot. You’ve seen those hoppers full of peanuts, right? Some stores will allow you to bring in a container and they’ll fill it right up for you. In my experience, this peanut butter never separates before we get through it. My go-to place in Montreal for this is Aliments Merci. (They offer the same service with almond butter)
2. Store your peanut butter in the fridge. If you’ve ended up with some runny pb, either from a bulk store or from a container, just toss it in the fridge. It’ll harden up the naturally-occurring oils and stop your peanut butter from separating. You may need to give it a few good stirs, but kept in the fridge it’ll hold together.

What’s with the Aquafaba in these Peanut Butter Cookies?

Aquafaba is simply chickpea cooking water, and it is very versatile stuff. Due to the proteins and starches that remain in the water after cooking beans, aquafaba makes a great egg replacement. You can use it for making mayonnaise, royal icing, merengue, and lots of other things, like these cookies! Many recipes that incorporate aquafaba advise cooks to use the liquid from a CAN of chickpeas. As someone who cooks from scratch as much as possible, precisely to avoid throwing away cans, I rarely have this on hand. I’m happy to report, however, that the liquid from my very-own chickpea cooking works just right for this recipe.

All you have to do is cook chickpeas and save the water. Boom: aquafaba. For a full tutorial on cooking chickpeas from scratch and making aquafaba, check out this great post from Forks Over Knives.

This recipe is my take on the 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookie recipes that are ubiquitous on the internet. They call for peanut butter, sugar, and eggs, and they undoubtedly employ “regular” peanut butter. This recipe subs in aquafaba for the eggs, lightens up the amount of sugar, and incorporates a bit of flour to account for varying degrees of liquidity in natural peanut butter. I hope you enjoy it!

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and line a baking pan.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk the aquafaba until frothy.
3. Add the peanut butter and sugar and stir until well combined.
4. Now add just enough flour until you have a workable dough. Start with 1/4 cup of flour, adding more a little bit at a time. Natural peanut butters vary in their consistency, the flour is here to account for that. Add flour until you can easily roll your dough into a ball without it sticking to your fingers.
5. Roll dough into 1 inch balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Using a fork, press down in one direction and then another, making a criss-cross pattern on the top. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt if you like, optional.
6. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until lightly golden. Allow to cool on the baking sheet before transferring to a rack to cool completely.

Looking for ways to switch it up?

1. Add in 1/2 chocolate chips or….
2. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, press a piece of chocolate into the top of each and let it melt into the cookie. Yummmm

If you don’t have aquafaba on hand…

but you still want to make peanut butter cookies, try out this recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Drops. Otherwise, switch gears completely and go for these peanut-buttery, oaty, no-bake Dyno Bars.

And if THAT doesn’t satisfy your need for peanut butter, tuck into a bowl of Peanut Butter Curry.