Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

I've been doing a lot of baking and cooking during this cold, dark, snowy, cold (...did I mention cold?) winter. Tomorrow the forecast is grim. It will be -30 F with the wind chill. It wouldn't be so bad if I could be magically transported to work, but I commute via train. So I am out in it: a ten minute walk to the train, then I wait. Fifteen minutes for a train at least and this is not the subway, the trains are above ground. Hence the name 'EL' train (stands for elevated). Then I need to transfer to another train where I usually wait yet another ten minutes in the COLD. By this time I pretend to be in a nice warm happy place until some scary person starts talking to me about gambling or something illegal. I ignore them and they go back to clipping their nails. After I transfer trains and arrive at my stop I still need to walk 3/4 of a mile to work, in the COLD. Can you sense my bitterness about the cold? Maybe? I feel better now that I've gotten that out of my system and now I can get back to what I originally intended to do which is talk about baking cookies, peanut butter cup cookies. Perfect after a cold snowy commute.

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons whole milk
40 miniature peanut butter cups, unwrapped of course (unless you like the taste of paper and aluminum)

DIRECTIONS

Helpful hint: (if you are of legal drinking age) it's fun to drink while you bake. It makes everything taste better and you feel less guilty eating spoonfuls of batter.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside. With a spoon or mixer, cream the butter, white sugar, brown sugar and peanut butter until well mixed. Beat in the egg, vanilla and milk. Add flour mixture in intervals while mixing. Take a tablespoon and scoop enough dough to make little round balls (hee hee) about the size of a walnut.


Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet about an inch and a half apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes. While baking, you need to get ready and unwrap your peanut butter cups. This process is monotonous so to make it more exciting do this: unwrap two peanut butter cups, eat one...unwrap three peanut butter cups, eat one and so on. As soon as they come out of the oven quickly press a peanut butter cup into each cookie like so:

Peanut butter cup pressing courtesy of Rob

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes then transfer to a cooling rack. It takes a while for the cookies to set and for the peanut butter cup to harden back up. But if you're impatient like me eat them right away, they're so good warm. And even better after you've been out in the cold.