Peanut Butter Cup Cookies are an easy and delicious recipe to make for your next Christmas Cookie Exchange or just to share with family and friends around the holidays. You don’t really need an excuse to make these cookies. These are my nephew’s favorite!
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🔑 Key to Success #1 – Take the Easy Route by Using a Cookie Mix
I want to start out by saying that you can certainly make your own peanut butter cookie dough if you’d like.
I have the best Peanut Butter Cookie recipe right here on the blog.
But when I make Peanut Butter Cup Cookies, I always use the Betty Crocker Peanut Butter Cookie Mix that comes in the pouch in the baking aisle of your local supermarket.
One of the main reasons for this is the fact that one package is perfect to make one full mini muffin pan of Peanut Butter Cup Cookies with no dough leftover.
You can use a roll of refrigerated cookie dough as well if you’d prefer.
Mix up the cookie dough according to package directions.
Usually, this involves adding an egg, oil, and water.
I have found that sometimes the package direction can change slightly from one pouch to the next so check each package individually.
🔑 Key to Success #2 – Use a Tablespoon For Perfect Measuring
Once you have your cookie dough mixed up, use a measuring spoon to scoop out 1 Tablespoon of dough and put it in a paper baking cup in your mini muffin pan.
Not a rounded Tablespoon. A level Tablespoon.
This is the perfect amount of dough for the Peanut Butter Cup Cookies.
If you’re making these for Christmas, there are sorts of mini muffin cups out there that would be so cute.
I really like metallic mini muffin cups at Christmas.
You can also use reusable silicone mini muffin cup liners or regular liners then remove the liners before serving.
You will still get a pretty scalloped edge. We have done this before and it turns out really cute.
If you don’t care about the color of the baking cups, I’d suggest these that are made of parchment paper so they’re naturally grease-proof and nonstick.
- The Perfect Measuring Spoon -Rounded to make a great ball of dough
- Christmas Mini Baking Cups -Red or Green or any festive design
- Nonstick Mini Baking Cups -Made from parchment, grease-proof and nonstick for the win!
- The Perfect Muffin Pan – USA Pans really are the best, very high quality and clean up easily.
🔑 Key to Success #3 – Use Mini Reese’s Cups … and Freeze Them
For the perfect ratio of peanut butter cookie to chocolate, you’ll want to use the Mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
I’m not talking about Reese’s Miniatures.
I mean Reese’s Minis that come unwrapped in the bag.
I’ve linked them up here in case you are not familiar with the minis.
Stash the bag of Reese’s in the freezer until your cookies are ready.
Making sure the candies are cold/frozen will ensure that they don’t melt too quickly once you press them into the cookies.
As soon as the peanut butter cookies come out of the oven, press an unwrapped Reese’s Mini Peanut Butter Cup into the top of each cookie.
You’ll want the candies to be about level with the top of the peanut butter cookies.
That’s the goal but it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Let them cool completely before you remove the cookies from the muffin cups.
That’s all there is to it!
📌 Get the Printable Recipe for Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
Save this Peanut Butter Cup Cookies recipe to your favorite Christmas Cookie board or your Cookie Exchange Ideas board.
Easy Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 pkg 17.5 oz Betty Crocker Peanut Butter Cookie Mix, made according to package directions
- Add’l Ingredients listed on Cookie Mix package usually egg, oil, water
- 24 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Minis
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place paper liners into mini muffin pan.
- Stir together cookie mix and additional ingredients according to package directions.
- Use measuring spoon to scoop out 1 level Tablespoon of dough and place into each muffin liner.
- Bake for 10-11 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately press an unwrapped Reese’s mini into the top of each cookie. Let cool completely so that chocolate firms up.
Equipment
Nutrition
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