The Big Cookie Project: Week 25

I have something to admit...at work when the 2 year olds eat their lunch, I'm a little jealous. There is a sea of Capri Suns, pb&j sandwiches lovingly cut out in to fun shapes, fruit peeled and sliced and ALWAYS a little treat in there. I remember with clarity that my lunches growing up did not resemble anything like this, my kid's lunches don't even look like that now. This past Thursday, one little girl had a delicious looking Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I coveted her peanute butter cup, sad to admit, but it looked yummy! It ended up being eaten, but the seed was planted...I went home knowing that my next cookie had to contain Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. After doing a quick google search, I found the perfect recipe: Reeses'-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies! Does such a delicious thing exist? Apparently, yes. This one baker is known for putting things IN TO cookie dough, such as: peanut butter cups, rolos and even oreos (I think that one is definitely on the to-do list soon). After looking over the recipe, I was totally on board. I just had to make a quick run to the grocery store and get the ingredients. The only change I made to the recipe was that they asked for full-size peanut butter cups, but instead I used the fun-size. The recipe was supposed to yield 12 cookies with the full-size cups, but I got 18 cookies using the fun-size. Here are some pictures, step by step and the recipe follows.

This is Step One where you put the chocolate chip cookie dough foundation

Step Two: Add the peanut butter cup. Press securely in to the base

Step Three: Add the top layer of cookie dough. Sorry for this blurry picture, it focused on the back cookies instead of the closest one.

Step Four: Cookies are baked and I cut one in half to show you the middle and how the peanut butter cup cooks down inside the cookie.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter (1 stick) Room temperature

1/2 cup chunky peanut butter

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup chocolate chips

12 full-sized Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (I used 18 mini cups)

Directions:

1. Cream together butter, peanut butter and sugars. Add egg and add dry ingredients just until the dry ingredients are incorporated. Stir in 1 cup of chocolate chips.

2. Scoop out a heaping Tablespoonful of dough and place it on your cookie sheet. Smash it down a bit. Top with a Reese's Peanut Butter cup. Then top with another heaping Tablespoonful of dough. Repeat with remaining dough and PB cups.

3. Bake at 350 degrees F. for about 12 minutes, until cookies are lightly browned and almost set.

They were actually fairly easy to do, nothing really complicated about it. The one thing you SHOULDN'T do is add up the calories in this stuffed cookie. By no means are these light cookies, so just enjoy now and worry later.

Enjoy them with a big glass of milk and they are perfect!

PS. This last picture is of Mallory at the playground. She has finally reached the age of playing on the equipment without me hovering. It makes me happy and worried at the same time.