Chocolate Pudding Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Another blizzardy Sunday in Boston. I’m over the winter. I also would like to take my car out of the garage at work because I am too much of a bag lady to take the bus every day. But if you know anything about Southie, you know that we have this extra ghetto parking saver system post snow storms where you are allowed to save your shoveled out spot for 48 hours after the snow emergency. So the streets are scattered with the weirdest pieces of junk like kitchen chairs, old tvs, baby toys, laundry bins, and parking cones. And while we all know that I am straight thugging from the hood of Southern Connecticut, you could not pay me to move someone’s space saver. I woke up this morning to a pretty blustery scene outside, which means those space savers aren’t going anywhere soon.

After a morning Friday Night Lights marathon(yes please Tim Riggins), the roomie and I decided it was worth it to trek through the arctic tundra for some much needed pedicures. We did a big grocery shop on the way back and decided today was going to be spent cooking, which seems to be the theme of this weekend. I was feeling the chocolate and peanut buter combo so grabbed a bag of mini Reese’s peanut butter cups and some chocolate pudding and figured I’d do some cookie experimenting today.

This weekend was a good one. Being single on Valentines day can be overwhelmingly sucky, unless you have some awesome friends. Which I do. A few of us went out Thursday night and the bar had what we deemed the world’s best playlist of all time. When I say best playlist of all time … I am talking about Wilson Phillips, Nsync, Whitney Houston, and Pitbull. If you know one thing about me, you know I love to air drum to Wilson Phillips “hold on” in public. (I get my sweet air drumming skills from my dad Skip). This bar did not have karokee or a dance floor, yet we spent most of the night belting out some tunes and creating our own dance floor. We also started a slow overhead clap during the chorus which we’d like to think the rest of the bar joined in on … but it was really just the five of us. I also got this Valentine sent to me at work, which seems pretty fitting.

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Now, on to the cookies.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 (3.4 oz.) package chocolate  instant pudding mix
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup mini chocolate chips
  • 40 mini Reese’s peanut butter cups (frozen)

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream together the butter and sugars. Mix in the chocolate pudding mix.

Step 2: Add in the eggs and vanilla and mix until well incorporated.

Step 3: Sift together the dry ingredients, then incorporate into the wet mixture.

Step 4: Add in the chocolate chips. I used mini ones because I had a half bag left over but use whatever you have. Coarsely chop the mini Reese’s and fold into the batter.

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Step 5: Using a cookie scoop, place even-size balls of dough on sil-pat or parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

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I wish I had taken a picture of our expressions when we first bit into these. Pure heaven in a cookie form.

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I need some feedback from my faithful readers (Hi, Mom). I’ve gotten adventurous in some of my cooking lately. All of my blog posts are about the cookies I make, but I’m thinking I should start expanding to some of my appetizers and dinner cooking experiments. What do you guys think?

Here’s a sampling of some of the successes I had with cooking and baking this weekend:

Homemade pretzel bites. Watch out Auntie Anne, I am coming for you.

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Homemade Chicken Pot Pie from Cooking Light.

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And can we just take a moment to admire the dessert table spread we put out for the housewarming yesterday. How cute are these little chalkboards that I found?

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Also, I always love getting requests for new cookie challenges. One of my coworkers has challenged me with some girl scout cookies this week. Game on, challenge accepted, and scouts honor I am going to dominate this challenge. I bet if I could incorporate Doritos into the cookie somehow, I’d make two of my coworkers pretty happy. Now I’ll go back to air drumming to some Wilson Phillips. Because remember …. dont you know, things can change, thing’s will go your way if you holllddd onnn (insert air drumming) for one more day.