Cooking Lesson #349: Back-To-School Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

…from the California Kitchen

credit: togetherasafamily.com

How you doin’? It’s back-to-school time, and these cookies will improve any student’s attitude in just one bite. Our best-selling confections at Choclatique were truffles that incorporated both chocolate and peanut butter. But we weren’t the first ones to discover the magic in this combination. H. B. Reese, a former dairy farmer from Hershey, Pennsylvania, created the original Peanut Butter Cup in 1928. A peanut butter cup is a wonderful confection filled with peanut butter and enrobed in chocolate.
 
This yummy peanut butter cookie recipe is baked in a small muffin tin with a mini-peanut butter cup pressed into a hot, just out-of-the-oven cookie before it has time to cool and set. This is a peanut butter cookie fancier’s dream. 
 
Prep Time:  25 minutes
Baked Time:  10 minutes
Cool time:  3 minutes
Yield: 12 to 15 cookies
 
Ingredients:
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons whole milk
12 to 15 mini-peanut butter cups (I prefer the original Reese’s)
 
Directions:
1.    Preheat an oven to 375⁰ F.
2.    Sift together the flour, salt and baking soda and set aside.
3.    Cream together the butter, sugar, peanut butter, and brown sugar until very fluffy.
4.    Beat in the egg, vanilla extract, and milk.
5.    Add the flour mixture; mix well. Shape into 12 to 15 balls and place each into an ungreased mini muffin pan.
6.    Bake for about 8 minutes until they just turn light brown.
7.    Remove from the oven and immediately press a peanut butter cup into the hot center of each cookie.
8.    Cool the muffin pan on a rack for about 30 minutes. 
9.    Carefully remove each cookie from the pan.

ChefSecret: There is only one way I know to make a great thing even better. Smear a little grape jelly on top of the baked cookie and then push in the peanut butter cup.

Quip of the Day: “A million kids want to clean up the earth—a million parents would be grateful if they started with their room.”
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