I was on my way to my friend’s apartment recently, and as usual was running seriously early. I never really understood people who are always fashionably late. I get so nervous that the subway will be delayed or the walk will take longer than expected that I allow WAY too much time.
It doesn’t really bother me, though, because I’m pretty good at keeping myself entertained. Sometimes this involves window-shopping, other times I find a good place to sit and either read the book that I always carry with me, play on my phone (i.e. pretend I’m doing something really important so people don’t look at me weird), or just occupy myself with my own thoughts.
It’s amazing how many random thoughts are going on in my head at any one time. Nate can attest to this, as I blurt out irrelevant things that makes sense to me at the time (Duh, I’m thinking about them!), but make no sense to Nate. He actually caught my incoherent blabbering on video the other day, unbeknownst to me. After watching it played back for me, I gotta say that I feel pretty bad for the guy and don’t know how he puts up with me.
As you can see, I’m very good at going off on a tangent! Aaaaanyway, so the other day when I was early and needed to waste some time in the Times Square area, I saw a store called World of Chocolate and could not refuse a quick time-wasting trip. I have to say, the name of the store was quite deceiving. It was a pretty big let-down considering it was all of about 100-200 sq feet of space and only had Hershey’s products.
While perusing the aisles, I came across a bag of mini Reeses Peanut Butter cups. Not only were they totally adorable (I love anything miniature!), but I imagined they’d be absolutely perfect for a cookie recipe. I was thinking pb or chocolate base but hadn’t made a final decision yet.
So I took these adorable chocolates home and waited til I had a spare moment to create something. I started with the recipe I had created for the Chocolate Chocolate chip cookies, but to add some extra pb flavor, I subbed peanut butter in place of the butter in the recipe. I wasn’t exactly sure whether this would work or not.
As I started to blend the batter I realized how dry and thick it was, so I threw in another egg. Again, I had no idea what this would do.
While the batter was still rather thick, I put giant 1/4 cup balls of dough on the sheets a
nd baked them up. When I took them out of the oven and onto the drying rack I was a little worried since each cookie felt like a brick. I swear, so heavy! So don’t get worried when your cookies turn out heavy too.
At this point I was slightly worried that they’d be all dried out on the inside. But lucky for me, this recipe ended up a win! They were the fudgiest chocolate cookies ever. Nate gave them a giant thumbs up!!
If you can’t find mini pb cups, you could easily chop regular pb cups into 1/4-1/2 inch sized pieces.
Chocolate-Peanut Butter PB Cup Cookies
Recipe by Me
Print this recipe!
makes 18-ish LARGE cookies
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dutch processed cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup peanut butter
4 Tbsp melted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups mini reese pb cups (or chopped reeses pb cups)
Heat oven to 325 degrees and have racks on upper & lower middle positions. Put parchment paper on 2 oversized cookie sheets (or do it in batches with smaller cookie sheets).
Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, salt & baking soda in medium size bowl. Set aside.
Mix peanut butter, butter & sugars until thoroughly blended by hand or with electric mixer. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined.
Add flour mixture to butter mixture and beat at low speed until just combined. Stir in pb cups.
Roll scant 1/4 cup dough into ball. Put ball on cookie sheet leaving 2.5 inches between each ball.
Bake about 15 – 18 minutes, switching sheets halfway through reversing sheets front to back and top to bottom. Cool cookies on cookie sheets. When cool, peel from parchment.
*Note, cookies will be very heavy when cooked!
