What's Cooking at Soomeenshee's: Peanut Butter-Cup Cookies

Looks innocuous enough, right? WRONG ...

This cookie has been plaguing Wonster's and my existence for the past few days. Pete came last week to LA and we baked these cookies for her BF and since then, Wonster has been craving them. I mean ... really CRAVING them ... like sending me multiple emails through the day about how delicious they are and how we have to make them again. This is the girl who has clearly stated that peace offerings cannot be made of sugar or butter and who, given the option between a vienna sausage or a sugar cookie, will pick the vienna sausage. While my eyes glaze over at the sight of cakes and cookies, she only has eyes for salty and savory things. So if a cookie can make a convert out of her, it had to be pretty darn good.

So we asked Pete for the recipe but the blasted recipe card got lost somewhere en route to Tokyo so we were out of luck. JW and I did some searching online for recipes but most of them included peanut butter in the recipe, and I know for sure we didn't use any peanut butter. Through my trusty friend, Google, we found a recipe from Real Simple that used chopped peanut butter cups and not peanut butter. Score! It wasn't Pete's beloved recipe, but I had a huge bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups taking up a huge chunk of space in my freezer and Wonster might have cried if we didn't make these, so we gave it a go.

It turned out pretty darn good. I will have to ask for the official recipe from Pete recipe once she gets back in town, but these definitely hit the spot for now. Hope you enjoy these, just as much as we did.

Peanut Butter-Cup Cookies

Real Simple

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 12-ounce package small peanut butter cups

Heat oven to 375° F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.

Coarsely chop the peanut butter cups and set aside.

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars until creamy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat to combine. Gradually add the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated.

Fold in the peanut butter cups, reserving about half a cup of the peanut butter cups. Drop tablespoon-size mounds of dough 2 inches apart onto the prepared baking sheets. Sprinkle the remaining peanut butter cups on top of the cookies right before putting them into the oven. The peanut butter cups have a tendency to get mushed up in the batter, but we thought it looked nice to have the peanut butter cups sticking up on each cookie.