Chocolate Peanut Blowouts

Chocolate-Peanut Blowouts

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate pieces
3/4 cup honey-roasted peanuts
3/4 cup coarsely chopped bite-sized chocolate-covered peanut butter cups (about 15)

1. Preheat oven to 350º. In a large mixing bowl beat butter and peanut butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add brown sugar, granulated sugar, baking soda, and salt. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in egg, milk, and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour. Stir in the chocolate pieces, peanuts, and chopped peanut butter cups.
2. Drop dough by generously rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake about 10 minutes or until light brown. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool.

Makes about 30 cookies.

I like chocolate. I like peanut butter. I thought this would be a good combination of the two flavors in a fun twist on the regular chocolate chip cookie. I found this recipe in The Ultimate Cookie Book from Better Homes and Gardens.

The ingredients:


I followed a suggestion to freeze the peanut butter cups before trying to chop them. That was a good suggestion as it made the cups cut easily without crushing like they would have normally. Even all cut up, peanut butter cups look delicious. Mmmm.

I didn't allow quite enough time for the butter to soften so when I beat it with the peanut butter I ended up with these little lumps.

The lumps were beaten out nicely, though, when I creamed the mixture with the sugars.

Here is the finished dough (sans the mix-ins). This dough included milk which I don't see that often in cookie dough recipes. It made it very light and fluffy.

All the mix-ins. I would never have thought of honey-roasted peanuts in a cookie but seeing them here got me pretty excited. That's a whole lot of goodness being stir into a yummy-smelling dough.

I had some trouble getting the mix-ins to stir in evenly. This resulted in a varied product since some cookies had a lot of peanuts and no peanut butter cups and others had lots of chocolate chips and no peanuts.

They baked up nicely. I cooked them for right around 9 minutes and 30 seconds. As usual, I misjudged the size of the cookies when scooping them out and ended up with lots of little cookies. My final count was 55 cookies and the recipe touted 30. I was still pleased though, because when you're making cookies for a crowd, small ones seem to go over better. My guess is that people don't feel as bad taking a little cookie and are more willing to try something if they don't have to commit to eating a lot.

The finished product: these were quite good. The honey roasted peanuts and the peanut butter cups really did make these special and exciting. They were a very peanutty cookie, maybe a little too heavy on the peanut side (I love chocolate) for my tastes but they went over well. Peanut-butter-based cookies tend to be on the dry side, but with the milk included in the dough, these came out as moister as any other I've tried. These would be phenomenal with a big glass of milk (maybe even chocolate milk if you're feeling really decadent). Mmmm.