These peanut butter heart cookies are Valentine’s Day version of peanut butter blossom cookies! They’re a soft, sweet, peanut butter cookie topped with chocolate heart and perfect for celebrating Valentine's Day or any time you want a festive peanut butter chocolate treat.
Creating a Valentine's Day dessert spread? Check out the best Valentine's Day treat recipes, featuring favorites like heart-shaped chocolate chip cookies and playful Valentine's day popcorn.
🔍 Quick Look: Peanut Butter Heart Cookies
- ⏱️ Prep Time: 20 minutes
- 🧊 Chill Time: 30 minutes
- 🔥 Bake Time: 8-10 minutes per batch
- 🕒 Total Time: 1 hour 50 minutes (including chilling)
- 🍪 Yield: 25-30 cookies
- 🥄 Tools: Mixer, baking sheet, parchment paper or silicone baking mat
- 🎉 Perfect For: Valentine's Day cookie exchanges, dessert boards, gifting, and festive holiday baking
- ⭐ Difficulty: Easy (great for beginner and bakers!)
Summarize and Save This Content on:
❤️ Why You'll Love These Peanut Butter Heart Cookies
- Easy: These are a super simple drop cookie with less than a 20-minute prep time!
- Festive: Instead of rolling the dough in regular sugar and topping it with a Hershey Kiss, these cookies are coated in pink and red sanding sugar and finished with a chocolate heart!
- Delicious: Peanut butter and chocolate is such a classic and delicious combination, you really can't go wrong! And, for a fun peanut butter-and-jelly-style flavor, this version uses Hershey Strawberries and Cream, but Dove hearts or any Valentine chocolate hearts work just as well!
Key Ingredients
See the recipe card for a full list of ingredients and quantities.
- Peanut Butter: For the best texture, I recommend smooth peanut butter like JIF or Skippy.
- Chocolate Hearts: You can use your favorite Hershey or Dove Hearts (I used this strawberry cream flavor, it tastes like strawberry ice cream and was so fun and delicious in these cookies!)
- All-purpose flour: make sure the flour is weighed using a kitchen scale or measured using the spoon and level method so you don't get too much flour in the recipe (if you do, the cookies will not be soft and chewy!).
- Unsalted Butter: This recipe calls for unsalted butter, but you can substitute salted butter by cutting the added salt to ¼ tsp.
- Brown Sugar: This recipe calls for light brown sugar, but you can substitute dark brown sugar in a pinch.
- Sanding Sugar: For extra crunch and color, but you can also use your favorite Valentine's Day sprinkles!
How to Make Peanut Butter Heart Cookies
Make Peanut Butter Cookie Dough
1. Add Butters and Sugar to a Bowl: Add the peanut butter, softened butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar to a large bowl or standing mixer.
2. Cream Together: Mix for 2-3 minutes until the mixture is super light and creamy.
3. Add in Egg and Vanilla Extract
4. Mix: Mix until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula as needed.
5. Mix in Flour: Add the flour mixture, and mix on medium for until just combined, about 1-2 minutes. Do not overmix the cookie dough.
6. Chill: Cover the bowl of cookie dough with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. While the dough is chill, pre-heat oven to 350℉ and unwrap candy.
Baking Peanut Butter Heart Cookies
7. Roll Cookies: Once the dough has chilled, scoop tablespoon-sized portions of dough and roll them into balls. Then, roll each dough ball in a bowl of sanding sugar or sprinkles to coat. Place the coated cookie dough balls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, keeping them at least 2 inches apart.
8. Bake Cookies: Bake one baking sheet at a time in a preheated oven in the middle rack of the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges just start to brown and there is some slight cracking.
9. Add Chocolate: Remove from the oven and immediately press the chocolate heart into the center of each cookie. You must add the hearts right when they get out of the oven and before the cookies firm up. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5-10 minutes, and then move to a cooling rack to finish cooling. Repeat with the remaining cookie dough. Once cool, Enjoy!
Tips and Tricks
- Measure out the flour using a scale or the spoon and swipe method of fluffing up the ingredients and then spooning into the measuring cups. Then, swipe the excess flour off the top of the cup with a knife. If you dip the measuring cup directly into the flour it can pack down and you will add too much flour to the recipe.
- Use an ice cream scoop for getting even-sized cookies.
- Unwrap your chocolate before the cookies come out of the oven! This way you can quickly press them into the cookies.
- Be careful! The chocolate will fully melt once you add it to the cookies, and if you touch it, it can lose its heart shape. It will firm up again once it cools, and then you can move them around.
FAQ
Nope, I do not recommend adding the chocolate before baking.
This is because the chocolate bloomed! You can read more about chocolate blooming on Wikipedia (they have a whole page about it).
This can happen if the chocolate melts and then resolidifies too fast or there is too much moisture around it, such as putting the cookies in the fridge to firm up quickly instead of having them firm up at room temperature. You can try to fix it by remelting the chocolate with a hair drying on a low heat. But know, the chocolate is still edible and tasty! It is just not as pretty.
Storing and Making Ahead
- Storing: Keep the baked cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
- Freezing: Baked and cooled cookies can be frozen in an airtight container up to two months.
Peanut Butter Heart Cookies
Equipment
- Baking pan
- Mixer
- Parchment Paper or a silicone baking mat
INGREDIENTS
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 218 g, weighed or spooned and leveled
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt or 1/4 tsp table salt
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, 1 stick softened
- 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter 130 g
- 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar 100 g
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar 100 g
- 1 large egg room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup red or pink sanding sugar for rolling
- 25-35 Chocolate Hearts unwrapped
Instructions
- In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- Add the peanut butter, softened butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar to a large bowl or standing mixer.
- Mix on medium for 2-3 minutes until the mixture is super light and creamy.
- Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula as needed.
- Add the prepared flour mixture, and mix on medium for until just combined, about 1-2 minutes. Do not overmix the cookie dough.
- Cover the bowl of cookie dough with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350℉ and unwrap your chocolate hearts.
- Once the dough has chilled, scoop out a heaping tablespoon-sized portion of dough and roll them into balls (a small ice cream scoop works great for this!).
- Then, roll each dough ball in a bowl of sanding sugar or sprinkles to coat. Place the coated cookie dough balls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, keeping them at least 2 inches apart.
- Bake one baking sheet at a time in the middle rack of the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges just start to brown and there is some slight cracking.
- Remove from the oven and immediately press the chocolate heart into the center of each cookie. You must add the hearts right when they get out of the oven and before the cookies firm up.
- Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5-10 minutes, and then move to a cooling rack to finish cooling. Repeat with remaining cookie dough. Once cool, Enjoy!
Notes
- Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature.
- Measure out the flour using a scale or the spoon and swipe method of fluffing up the ingredients and then spooning into the measuring cups. Then, swipe the excess flour off the top of the cup with a knife. If you dip the measuring cup directly into the flour it can pack down and you will add too much flour to the recipe.
- An ice cream scoop works great for getting even-sized cookies.
- Make sure to unwrap your chocolate candy before the cookies come out of the oven! This way you can quickly press them into the cookies.
- These cookies will last up to 5 days in an airtight container at room temperate or can be frozen up to 2 months.
Sophia Assunta says
I hope you all love this recipe as much as I do!