Reese's Brownie Cups

Okay, so I revisited making cookies using Reese's peanut butter cups.  I thought perhaps I could make things easier by using an easy cookie recipe.  I tried some Cake Mix Cookies, and thought I would wrap a peanut butter cup inside.

I failed again.  Well, on the putting the peanut butter cup inside part.  That didn't work at all, so I  improvised.  The result turned out quite excellent, though:

They did turn out delicious, but if you know me at all by now, you know nearly every cooking-and-baking venture comes with a story.  So, here's the scoop. :)

First of all - I thought I was making them wrong, because the batter is so stiff and so sticky, it was really difficult to work with!  I used my mixer, and once it was well-moistened, the entire blob of dough wrapped around one of my beaters, and before I could shut it off, it started flinging chocolate strands everywhere.  No, I do not have a picture of it, but I sort of wish I did.  It was a race between me and the dog, to see who could clean it up first.  (Fortunately, I won.)

But it was WAY too sticky to manage any rolling.  Perhaps if I had chilled the dough - but I'm so impatient and I didn't really reserve enough time to prep the dough and come back later to bake it.  SO wrapping it around a candy wasn't happening.  It stuck to my fingers pretty much immediately.

So I decided to do the mini-muffin-tin method again, as you can tell.  By washing my hands every third cookie or so, so that it would stop sticking to me and get into the tins, I finally got the whole batch dropped.  I don't know how anyone uses a spoon to drop these things, unless you use like two dozen spoons?  Am I the only one who finds this mix to be terribly sticky?

But, once I got them into the oven and they started smelling delicious, my memory of the fight started to fade, and I was really hopeful.  I baked them for 8 minutes, and then pressed refrigerated peanut butter cups into the centers a soon as they came out of the oven.

The result?  Awesome, actually.  Soft and chewy, very brownie-like, with bonus peanut butter cups!  Good enough I'd brave the batter again, though I think next time I'd skip the mixer and stir it with a spoon, and leave enough time to chill the dough before working with it.

If you haven't made cake mix cookies before, the recipe is extremely simple:

1 box mix (18.75 oz.)
2 eggs
1/2 c. vegetable oil
(I of course added peanut butter cups to my version, the recipe made about 30)

Bake in a greased mini-muffin tin at 350 for 8-10 minutes.  Press your peanut butter cups into the baked cookies as soon as they come out of the oven.  A tip: unwrap them first, toss them back into the bag, and pop them into the frig while you prep your dough and bake.  They press into the warm cookies better if they are cold.

And, tadaa.  I would totally do these again, though I'm still on the hunt for that elusive peanut-butter-cup-inside-a-cookie-recipe.  Please let me know if you find one!! :D



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~ Adrianne