Buttery, melt in the mouth vegan peanut butter shortbread cookies made with just 4 ingredients!

Simple, no fuss, no chilling required, rich and delicious cookies made, baked and ready to eat in around half an hour?  Well, yes please!  These peanut butter shortbread cookies really do tick all the boxes for easy to make and delicious to eat.  The addition of peanut butter takes these vegan cookies into the realms of ‘oh just one more’ to 10 cookies later and ‘where did ALL those cookies go?’

I’ve always taken my shortbread seriously.  And why fix what ain’t broke. Shortbread is one of those absolute timeless classics that I always thought shouldn’t be messed with.  But one day I’m standing there spreading peanut butter on digestive biscuits (anyone else do that?) and wondered what peanut butter would be like actually IN the biscuit.  But I didn’t want to make digestive biscuits – I’ve already done that.

Crunchy or smooth peanut butter?

I’ve used both making these shortbread cookies and hand on heart they both taste amazing.  And slightly salted peanut butter is a whole other story!

How to make these easy peanut butter shortbread cookies:

There’s only 4 ingredients so this is going to go fast.  Try and keep up 😉

Either by hand or in a stand mixer beat together the peanut butter and spread.  I’ve used tub margarine rather than vegan butter or block margarine as the addition of peanut butter adds enough richness to the shortbread.  It also gives a softer, creamier baked cookie.

Beat in the sugar then add the flour and mix together just until it forms a dough.

Tip the dough out onto your work surface and knead for just a moment or two until it’s soft and smooth.

Dust your surface with a little flour then roll out the dough to around 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) thick.

Use a cutter to cut out the cookies.  Shape and size of the cutter is up to you, I used a 2 inch (5cm) round cutter.  You can also cut simply into bars with a knife.

Place the cookies on a lined baking sheet then re-roll the trimmings until you’ve used all the dough.

With a fork poke a few holes in each biscuit then bake in a preheated oven for 15 minutes until just set and very lightly golden.  They will firm up a little as they cool.

As soon as they come out of the oven sprinkle with a little extra sugar.

Cool completely on wire racks and store in an airtight container.  They actually keep pretty well for a few days – if they ever last that long!

Looking for even more easy vegan cookie recipes?  Try these:

Cinnamon Sugar Cream Cheese Cookies

White Chocolate and Raspberry Cookies

Chocolate Orange Shortbread

Oatmeal Cookies

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