Vegan Peanut Butter Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies

Has this happened to you? You see someone eating a food, and then you simply cannot get it out of your head. So you make a special trip to the grocery store to get said food, and it’s just as wonderful as you’d hoped.

That happened to me last week: my co-worker (Katie!) jumped on a meeting with me, and she was munching on some peanut butter-stuffed pretzel nuggets.

I love peanut butter, and I love pretzels, so it should come as no surprise that I completely and totally adore peanut butter-stuffed pretzel nuggets. I used to eat them a lot as a kid, but I hadn’t had them in years.

Well, friends. I’m happily well on my way through my second bag in a week. A gloriously tasty week.

But! Upon first bite, I had a devious idea: “Could I add these to cookies?” I thought. “More importantly, could I add them to chocolate chip cookies?“

Pretzels in cookies are not a new thing –– you see them everywhere these days, as the crunchy, malty, saltiness of a pretzel meshes beautifully with a sweet, rich cookie.

And we all know chocolate and peanut butter is just… a faultless union of flavors.

So what I have for you today is a perfect vegan cookie base, melty chocolate chips, and those crisp peanut butter pretzels… in each and every bite.

Oh me, oh my.

The cookie base is simple and relatively free of any “weird” or hard-to-get ingredients.

Just a simple combination of a flax egg, flour, baking soda, cornstarch, salt, vegan butter, brown sugar, and vanilla extract is all you’ll need. Add in your chocolate chips, then let the dough chill out (literally) in the fridge for two hours.

These two hours are crucial –– they allow the flour to further hydrate with your liquid ingredients, making for a more tender, chewy cookie. Plus, if your dough is chilled, the cookies will spread less in the oven, yielding a puffier, softer result.

You’ll want to add your chopped PB pretzels riiiiight before baking. You don’t want that crisp pretzel to:

A. Lose its crunch

B. Absorb the liquid that the flour needs to absorb instead

So, to be safe, it’s best to toss in your pretzel chunks right before you shape your cookies!

Speaking of, one of my favorite cookie-making tips comes from the baking queen herself, Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction.

She recommends shaping your cookie dough balls taller than they are wide to prevent spreading and to give us a thick, chewy cookie. I do this with nearly all of my cookies at this point, and it never lets me down.

If you’re someone like me who also thinks that crunchy chocolate chip cookies have no place in your kitchen, don’t skip this step!

For me this week, “self love” is me diving face-first into those seductive pools of melty, gooey chocolate, the crunchy, salty pretzels with a fun nutty center, and that chewy, buttery vegan cookie dough.

Give yourself a little cookie self love, friend. You deserve it.

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