Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Hi friends! I hope this post finds you well, and maybe in need of a Sunday baking project? I wanted to take the time out today to highlight an old post: Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cup Cookies. In all my days since, I don’t think I’ve written a recipe quite as extravagant as this one. What we have here is a peanut butter cookie speckled with chocolate chunks and laden with a full-sized peanut butter cup. Told you it was extravagant! They’re luxurious, most definitely calorific, and my god are they delicious. I’m pleased to report: the recipe, originally shared to the blog in September 2013, stands the test of time.

In the original post, I rambled on about seemingly irrelevant topics and left talk of the actual cookies until the very end. I had just turned 20 and had been gallivanting around Italy with my boyfriend for two weeks, going to festivals and generally just enjoying the summer before my final year in college. Ah, youth.

WHERE THE INSPIRATION FOR THESE EPIC COOKIES CAME FROM

These cookies were inspired by a festival I was at during that summer. It was called The Secret Garden Festival and it was entirely unlike any other festival I’d been to. The basics were the same – tent, wellies, baby wipes, all four seasons at once – but it was entirely different. It was tiny – held in the garden of a beautiful country house – and everyone there was genuinely lovely. There were two small makeshift stages: Glastonbiscuit for spoken word, and Cookiestock for music. At nights, all the festival-goers gathered around a large campfire, swapping stories and eating cookies together. It was idyllic.

When I returned home, I knew I had to make a cookie to commemorate the experience.

WHY YOU SHOULD MAKE THESE CHOCOLATE CHIP PEANUT BUTTER CUP COOKIES

I feel like this is self-explanatory, but let me round up the reasons you should make these babies:

• what we have here is a peanut butter cookie, speckled with roughly chopped chocolate. That in its own right would be damn delicious, but we’re going to take it to the next level.

• there is an entire peanut butter cup par-baked into these cookies. After a quick bake, a peanut butter cup is lightly pressed on top, and they go back into the oven. The cups melt into the cookies in the most mouthwateringly delicious way.

• there’s no chill time required. That’s right! You can go from zero to cookie in less than twenty minutes.

• they would be so perfect for Christmas Cookie Boxes. I’ll definitely be baking up a large batch in December!

I had written in the original post that these cookies come with a warning: they are not for the faint of heart. They are excessive, over-indulgent, heavy, and 100% a guilty pleasure. Eating one tastes like sitting down with a jar of peanut butter and a spoon, while also simultaneously snacking on chocolate. They are everything I want from a cookie. I hope you make them, and I hope you love them.

Happy baking!

PS, I used a whole variety of peanut butter cups this time ’round – dark, milk, white, Reese’s Pieces – and each was as delicious as the next! xo

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, with a whole peanut butter cup melted into the top right after baking. Yum!

P R E P10MINUTES

C O O K12MINUTES

T O T A L32MINUTES

Yield: 16 COOKIES

Author: Vicki @ Passionate Baker

INGREDIENTS

• 220 g plain flour

• 3 tsp baking powder

• 113 g salted butter, at room temp

• 180 g peanut butter

• 100 g granulated sugar

• 100 g light brown sugar

• 1 egg

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 150 g dark chocolate, chopped

• 16 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat the oven to 170°C & line baking sheets with parchment paper.

• In a medium bowl mix the flour with the baking powder. Set aside. 

• In a large bowl, with the use of an electric mixer, beat the butter, peanut butter & sugars until light & fluffy. Beat in the egg & the vanilla. 

• Slowly add the dry ingredients into the mix, beating on a slow speed until a dough ball forms. 

• Using your hands, add the chocolate chunks into the mix. Once combined, divide the dough up into 16 equal balls of dough – about 56g each – and place onto the prepared baking trays. Before placing in the oven, flatten each ball down so that it forms a rough disk shape.

• Bake the cookies in the oven for 9 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven & immediately press a peanut butter cup into the centre of each cookie, then place back into the oven for a further 3 minutes.

• Remove the cookies from the oven & allow to cool for 10 minutes on the baking sheet before being transferred to a wire rack to cool completely.