Perfect together.

“I got to thinking about relationships and partial lobotomies. Two seemingly different ideas that might just be perfect together - like chocolate and peanut butter.” -- Carrie, Sex & the City

Oh, chocolate and peanut butter. You make me so happy. Especially when you combine one of my favorite candies into a cookie. Lucky for me I was sending a care package to my lovely friend Nicole, who is attending FIT in New York. I asked her what her favorite candy was, to which she replied Reese's. I didn't want to just send a bag of candy, and I had remembered seeing a recipe for Peanut Butter Cup Cookies that I knew would be perfect.

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

adapted from Real Simple

1 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) Unsalted Butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup Dark Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
1 Large Egg
1 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
About 30 Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 375° and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together dry ingredients.
3. Cream the butter and sugars. Add the egg and vanilla and beat to combine.
4. Add in the flour mixture until incorporated. Fold in the peanut butter cups.
5. Using a medium sized scoop, drop dough about 2 inches apart onto prepared baking sheets (*see note below). Bake for about 10 minutes, until light brown around the edges (centers will still be soft). Remove from baking sheets and allow to cool on wire racks.

Things I learned from making these cookies:

• Do not bake more then 10 minutes
• Chill the dough (I did one dozen before chilling the dough, and also overbaked them so chilling the dough was a good idea)
• Don't put mini Reese's in a food processor (they get too ground instead of chopped. Breaking them up with my fingers was much easier. I also think I'd use regular sized ones next time)
• The recipe does not make 48 cookies. Unless you're using an itsy bitsy cookie scoop, which I do not.
• *Simply folding the broken Reese's into the batter isn't enough (and your cookies won't look like the ones in the picture). You must flatten the cookies a bit after placing them on the parchment and push a few more pieces of crushed Reese's onto the tops of the cookies. 

And also, as promised, here is the recipe for Peanut Butter Chip Brownies from my previous post.

Peanut Butter Chip Brownies

4-1oz squares Unsweetened Baking Chocolate

10 Tablespoons Butter

2 cups Sugar

4 Large Eggs

2 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract

1 1/2 cups Flour

1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1 teaspoon Salt

1-10oz bag Reese's Peanut Butter Chips (approx 1 2/3 cups)

1. Preheat oven to 350° and grease a 9x13 baking pan. 
2. Microwave (or use a double boiler) chocolate and butter until melted. Set aside to cool.
3. Whisk together dry ingredients (excluding peanut butter chips*) in bowl.
4. Beat sugar, eggs, and vanilla on high speed for five minutes.
5. Beat in chocolate mixture on low speed. Beat in flour mixture until blended.
6. Spread in pan and sprinkle top with peanut butter chips. Bake for about 20 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean.

*If you wanted the chips to be mixed in with the batter, simply toss with a little flour and fold them in after step 5.