Reese's Cup Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies

These cookies are out of control.  (If you know me, you know that's the current catchphrase.  I don't know where it came from.)  These are peanut butter chocolate chip cookies with an ENTIRE full-size Reese's cup inside of them.  Like I said, out of control.

I made these for one of my friends who is training for a long-distance run.  Suddenly, all of my friends are runners, which is totally amazing.  They have all inspired me to get my own butt moving just to keep up with them.  I'm not anywhere near as fast or as capable of long distances as they are, but I'm getting there.  :)  I'll be running (and walking) my first 5K the day before I turn 30, and some of these amazing friends will be doing it with me, which I totally appreciate.  I don't know if they know how inspiring they are to me. 

And so what do I do to repay them?  I make them insane cookies.  Counter-productive?  Possibly.  Delicious?  Definitely.  But it's what I do.  By the way, those of you who are from Jacksonville know European Street Cafe and their crazy huge cookies?  These cookies are that size, and my friend and her husband tell me that these are just as good, which is very high praise indeed.

Reese's Cup Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies

(Adapted from The Recipe Girl blog)

Makes 12 LARGE cookies

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)-- at room temperature
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter (you really should use crunchy, not smooth)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk chocolate chip (approximately)
12 full-sized (!) Reese's cups

Preheat oven to 350 and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.  If you don't have parchment paper, get some.  It's cheap and it has totally changed my life. :)

In a large bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together butter, sugars, and peanut butter.  Next, add the egg and beat until fluffy.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt).  Add these dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in the large bowl, mixing until just incorporated.  Stir in the cup of chocolate chips.

You should have room for about 6 cookies per cookie sheet.  I did all the steps separately-- I did all the bottoms, all the middles, and all the tops at a time, instead of assembling each cookie separately.  So-- start each cookie with one heaping tablespoonful of dough.  (I used the Tbsp measuring spoon for this.)  Make 12 cookie bottoms on the cookie sheets.  Next, use a sugared fork to criss-cross each cookie bottom and smush it down flat for the Reese's cup.  Next, place one Reese's cup on top of each cookie bottom.




Cookie bottoms and Reese's cup middles

Next, add another heaping tablespoon of dough to top each cookie.  Just as before, use a sugared fork to criss-cross the top dough and flatten the dough over the Reese's cups.  After this step, I also pinched the dough together around the sides of the cookie, which turned out to be a good idea-- it kept the Reese's from running out of the cookies as they baked.



Final assembly

Bake until lightly browned-- approximately 12 minutes.  Try to wait until they cool to eat them. :)

Note 1:  A tip from the original recipe was to spray your measuring cup with Pam or another cooking spray before measuring the peanut butter so it would slide out more easily.  This DEFINITELY helps.

Note 2:  This is a very easy recipe to make dairy-free-- substitute soy or vegetable margarine for the butter (we use Willow Run) and use dairy-free chocolate chips (we use Ghirardelli's semi-sweet).  Obviously, you have to leave out the Reese's, but the dairy-free kiddo in this house doesn't even know she's missing them.

YUM.