Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies for Juliet’s birthday

peanut butter sandwich cookies

I swear, I think this will be my last not-healthy recipe for a little while. But it was Juliet’s 6th birthday last week so I sat her down with my iPad and we went through one of my Pinterest boards so she could pick out something special. She knows what she likes, that’s for sure, and once she saw heart-shaped peanut butter sandwich cookies, the searching stopped. I kept thinking she’d want a cake of some kind, but Juliet didn’t care about that. Like me, she loves her peanut butter.

I usually avoid making cookies on a weeknight; it can take forever to get through each batch and the clean-up takes longer too. But a birthday is a birthday, and Juliet deserves the dessert of her dreams. I did my best to provide it.

Of course I had help.

Juliet and Nathaniel at the ready

Juliet and Nathaniel at the ready

This recipe does not hold back on anything. We started with a cup of peanut butter, a cup of butter, a cup of cane sugar, and a cup of brown sugar. Insanity! (Delicious insanity.)

Juliet and Nathaniel with butter

Nathaniel pouring sugar

Juliet pouring sugar

butter and sugars

I put the peanut butter in, then put the mixer to work.

butters and sugars

butters and sugars

butters and sugars

butters and sugars

We added the eggs, beating after each one, and then the vanilla.



Once that was thoroughly mixed, the kids and I were ready to get the dry ingredients together.

I couldn’t help myself, I had to do SOMETHING to make this recipe a little healthier, so we used whole wheat white flour and wheat germ instead of all purpose flour.

Juliet adding flour

Nathaniel added the baking powder.

butters and sugars

The kids were clearly feeling good about their teamwork.

collaborative kids

Juliet took on the whisking. (Like mother, like daughter.)

Juliet whisking

We slowly added the flour/wheat germ/baking soda combo to the butter and sugar mixture in the stand mixer bowl until it turned into cookie batter.

adding flour

adding flour

adding flour

Now came the tricky part. Rolling out sugar cookie dough is one thing, but this was a very different type of batter and it was a little sticky and just not as smooth as I’d have liked it to be. I found the best strategy was to roll it out in very small pieces, do my best to get some decent heart and star shapes, and then start again. I also ended up making the cookies pretty thick; if the dough got too thin it just fell apart when I tried to move the cookies to the tray.

rolling dough

cutting out hearts

cookie hearts on tray with Juliet

We did some stars, too.

Juliet making stars

Juliet making stars

They seemed baked at 11 minutes, and as we did tray after tray, the cookies got thicker and thicker. They lost their shapes a little, but not too much, and they smelled peanut buttery and good.


Juliet went off to bed around this point, and it was time for the frosting. I started with butter and peanut butter, beating until creamy smooth.

butter and peanut butter

butter and peanut butter, mixed

Powdered sugar and milk were next, and then it was just a matter of watching it transform.

adding milk and powdered sugar


It took all my willpower to actually use this on the cookies instead of eating it with a spoon. Or a shovel.

The cookies were thick, and doubling them up with the filling seemed crazy, but it was all for the birthday cause. On went the filling. On went another cookie.

peanut butter sandwich cookies

peanut butter sandwich cookies

Not too bad, right?

I don’t have the most delicate touch in the world, but they looked okay, and when Juliet came downstairs on her birthday morning and saw them, the look on her face made my exhaustion worthwhile. She loved them.

And I love her.

And she had a really nice birthday.


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