Nutty brown butter, white miso, and creamy peanut butter create a cookie that is all about salty sweet balance and punchy flavor. These brown butter miso peanut butter cookies are a bite of wow!
These cookies have a crunchy, sugar and sesame seed coated exterior and a chewy center. The addition of white miso creates an umami, salty yet sweet cookie with some tang and a bit of bang too!


White Miso
I have used white miso in baking for years due to the way it heightens flavor. It adds a touch of fermentation, a subtle sweetness, with a blast of saltiness that rounds out all the ingredients into a blissful bite that will wake up your senses. The texture is similar to a drier looking peanut butter, so it mixes really well. And it’s easily blended into the cookie dough.
What surprised me most about these miso PB cookies is how much Bea & Tilly loved them. While I was making the cookie dough I told them to hold off eating the cookies since they may not like them.
Of course they did not listen! While I was getting my camera Bea came running into my office exclaiming, “Mom! Those cookies! Wow! They’re so good! They made me feel all warm inside!” So these are absolutely kid approved. And Fortunately they left enough for me to photograph!


Brown Butter Miso Peanut Butter Cookies
These cookies are simple to make using a mixer or just a whisk and bowl. They don’t require any chill time, so it’s a quick cookie. But even simple and quick, these brown butter miso peanut butter cookies are definitely epic!
I taste every ingredient I decide to use in a recipe and sometimes they send me sprinting for water. Miso will curl your toes. A word of advice…Don’t eat a huge spoonful of plain miso. Just don’t do it!

Tips For Using Miso
So what if you don’t want a lot of miso flavor in this cookie? Miso works interchangeably with the peanut butter in this recipe. So you can easily swap the amount of miso you reduce with peanut butter. If you are new to using miso in desserts, start with 2 tablespoons of the white miso paste. And then add 2 extra tablespoons of peanut butter to the dough.
For the following miso peanut butter cookies, I used skippy natural. Any creamy peanut butter will work. The one I use does includes sugar and oil. Using any creamy peanut butter with a similar texture will give you a chewy cookie. If you use a natural pb without added sugar, you will want a bit more sugar in the dough to balance it. So please feel free to message me and I can tweak the recipe for you.
A note for all of you cookie dough taste testers, the raw cookie dough is salty! The finished cookie is the star since it’s rolled in crunchy raw sugar and baked to soft, chewy perfection.
Thanks for making these brown butter miso peanut butter cookies! I developed this recipe after getting a request through Instagram for a miso cookie that would be similar to the miso butterscotch I made on GABS. Also, I truly appreciate that I inspire people to create their own recipes that are based off of my recipes and flavor combos, But please do credit me when you use versions of my recipes and my photos on your blog, Instagram, cookbooks, and so on! XO, Sarita
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Brown Butter Miso Peanut Butter Cookies
These cookies are sweet and salty with rich brown butter and white miso. They are Crispy sugar and sesame seed covered on the outside and chewy on the inside!
Ingredients
- 1/2 C butter browned (salted)
- 1 teaspoon Sesame Oil
- 1/4 C creamy Peanut Butter *I use skippy natural
- 1/4 c white miso paste
- 3/4 C dark brown sugar
- 1/4 c granulated sugar
- 1 jumbo egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste or extract
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
- 1 1/2 C AP Flour
- 1/2 C raw sugar for rolling
- 1/4 C white sesame seeds for rolling
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line baking sheets with parchment paper or silpats.
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Then make brown butter. Put butter into saucepan set on medium high heat. It will melt, bubble, sizzle. Swirl pan occasionally. Then it will foam and rise up, bits of browned butter will form and aroma blooms as the foam does. Swirl and as the foam goes down you’ll have the browned butter. Set aside.
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In stand mixer, fitted with paddle attachment, put miso paste, sesame oil, and peanut butter. Pour over melted butter and mix on low until melted butter is incorporated.
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Add sugars and mix, increase the speed to medium for 3 minutes.
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Then add egg and vanilla. Beat for an additional 3 minutes.
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Then add baking powder and salt. Mix a minute.
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Turn mixer to low. Add in flour gradually. Allow it to mix until smooth dough forms.
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Add raw sugar and sesame seeds to a bowl. Scoop dough balls (1 tablespoon). Roll in sugar and sesame seeds. Place onto baking sheet. Press down each ball gently to flatten.
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Bake 9 minutes.
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Repeat until all dough is used.
Recipe Notes
*for dough taste testers, Please note that the dough is salty! But once rolled in the sugar and baked, that will be evened out to the most awesome salty-sweet flavor!
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