Chewy Chocolate Cookies with Mini Peanut Butter Cups Recipe

August 4, 2008

Today’s post is dedicated to Susan, a chocolate peanut butter loving friend!

Okay, I’m taking a short break from all this product and restaurant reviewing to bring you a tasty cookie recipe. I constantly bookmark recipes for chocolate and peanut butter desserts and it’s rare, but once in a while I actually remember to check in my bookmarks folder and use one. This recipe really stuck in my brain since I’ve had a container of Trader Joes Mini Peanut Butter Cups sitting in my pantry for a little while. And I woke up yesterday with this intense cookie craving. You know how it feels right? So like any addict would, I immediately ran to the kitchen and made 4 dozen cookies. I only wanted one, but 47 back up cookies isn’t going to hurt anyone, right?

Taste Tester wasn’t as enraptured with these cookies as I expected him to be. His criticism was that I used really high quality cocoa powder for the cookie base (Askinosie Single Origin Natural Cocoa Powder) and lower quality peanut butter cups (Trader Joes), and the two didn’t mesh so well. He said the cookies would taste better with peanut butter chips.

Not so fast! I actually didn’t have the required two cups of mini peanut butter cups (some of them had gotten eaten by… someone… I think, I mean I wasn’t there so I don’t really know, just an assumption) so I slipped in 1/3 cup of peanut butter chips. He took another bite to see if I was telling the truth and responded with an “Mmmm” of acceptance.

I will agree with him that I thought the peanut butter cups had a little bit of an odd, maybe waxy flavor. But I really liked that the peanut butter in the cups got all melty while the peanut butter chips stayed firm.

So if you can’t get your hands on some other higher quality brand of mini peanut butter cups, maybe just chop up some larger peanut butter cups or just go with the peanut butter chips.

Get the recipe at A Mingling of Tastes. As I said, the only change I made was to use a little less than 2 cups of mini pb cups and added 1/3 cup peanut butter chips. Also, the cookies look a little fluffier in the photos on A Mingling of Tastes. I have a feeling this is either because I did not beat my egg whites enough or wasn’t gentle enough with the batter when I was combining the dry with the wet. This wasn’t a problem since I still really liked the cookies, just keep that in mind if you want really fluffy ones.

Another Note: (just incase you don’t read the post that goes with the recipe) she’s not kidding - they really don’t look finished when they’re done baking. They are barely set to the touch and your finger will sink into them if you press down. Just have faith and pull them out. Do a test batch first if you need to.