Earlier this year our family took a little trip to Monterey, CA. It is a beautiful place to visit and we spent an afternoon at the Aquarium and then treated ourselves to the Nestle Tollhouse Cookie store right across the street. (Skip freshly baked cookies? No way!)
We shared a sampling of cookies and by far the one we were practically arm wrestling over was the Reese’s peanut butter cup cookie. I actually bought a few extra to bring home for our pet-sitter and low and behold there were only crumbs left by the time we got home.
This is a really simple cookie to make and I made a mental note to be sure and post it before Christmas for those that like to exchange Christmas cookies.
These are an absolutely delicious combination of peanut butter and chocolate gooey-ness and they are bite sized.
These are incredibly easy to make– I prefer homemade peanut butter cookie dough but in a pinch you can always grab premade dough from the grocery store.
You can also make the peanut butter dough well in advance and freeze it if you want to have an easy dessert in the freezer or you want to get a jump on the holidays. You can absolutely modify this recipe to include flavors you love. If you want to use chocolate chips instead of the Reese’s cups, that would be delicious. You could also pipe in Nutella and that should be wonderful too.
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So here is the peanut butter cookie recipe I like to use courtesy of Nestle Toll House— I modified the recipe just a bit:
- Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
- 1½ cups flour
- 1 stick butter- softened
- ½ cup peanut butter (chunky or creamy)
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Combine flour and baking soda to a bowl and set aside.
- Cream butter and sugars together in a mixer until smooth- add peanut butter and vanilla and mix until incorporated.
- Add one egg and mix.
- Slowly add flour mixture until well incorporated.
- Add a small amount of dough to the bottom of a mini muffin tin.
- Don't overfill or you won't have space for the Reese's cup.
- Bake for about 7 minutes or until the cookies look to be just about baked through.
- While they are baking, unwrap your Reese's and have them ready to go.
- Remove carefully from oven and while the cookies are warm, gently press the Reese's into the center.
- Let cool and enjoy!
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So simple right? Just a little note about pushing in the Reese’s cups- the peanut butter cookies need to be warm for the cups to push in smoothly. If you push too hard or you don’t push hard enough the cups will have a second to start to melt and they will look a little gooey on top. So try to just gently push them in with one fluid motion for the neatest result.
Oh and you can totally use full size Reese’s cups– they do fit in a mini muffin tin but you will have about 70% Reese’s and 30% cookie. I think the larger Reese’s actually look prettier.
If you don’t have a mini muffin tin, you can also make these in a regular muffin tin. The ones at the Nestle store are actually much larger than mine so totally up to you 🙂
And if you like this recipe, you might also like these:
Homemade Chocolate Magic Shell
My mom and I have been making these for years using the store bought peanut butter cookie mix. They are easy and scrumptious! Best served warm!
Yum! These are my kids all time favorite cookie! They request these for everything…birthdays..holidays..going off to college..any excuse for me to make these!
I know it Dodi. Sadly these don’t last very long in this house- they are delicious 🙂
Kelly I saw store bought mix recipes- I think maybe from Pioneer Woman? Very easy right? I am a little picky with cookies and only like homemade- but either way so fast and so yummy 🙂