Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Blondies

Fall back means I can’t figure out what time it is anymore. Also it’s still crunch time with this work project so lately I’m not usually sure what day of the week it is. As promised, I’ll be doing some cookies in the coming weeks with leftover Halloween candy. Here is one thing I learned over the past week. When it comes to having Halloween candy within arm’s reach … I have the self control of a 5-year old. It’s really bad. Especially when it comes to M&Ms or anything Reese’s. I went to Target this weekend to see if I could snag some good Halloween candy deals … which I did … and then overdosed on M&Ms Saturday afternoon. But I did get this giant bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups which lead to this little experiment today.

Here’s the thing about Reese’s peanut butter cups and why they are my favorite candy (yes, even more than M&Ms). I first started working on my consultant skillset at a young age. Growing up our neighborhood in CT was the best for trick-or-treating. We had a long street and then a street that circled around … so there were at least 40 legitimate houses to hit. My brother, sister and I would come back to the house, empty out our candy in piles in the family room, and then start negotiating trades. My brother, the oldest, has a severe peanut allergy so I had all of the leverage in the candy trade. So I ended up with all of the peanut butter candy, and he ended up with the Nestle Crunch. Boom, synergy.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 2 cups light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 20 Reeses’s Peanut Butter cups  (frozen)

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a small saucepan over the stove, melt the butter and brown sugar on low heat. Add in the peanut butter and wisk together until it is incorporated. Set aside to cool.

Step 2: In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Step 3: Once the butter/sugar/peanut butter mixture has cooled enough, add it into the mixer and mix in the eggs and vanilla. You need to let it cool otherwise the eggs will cook. No one wants scrambled egg blondies.

Step 4: Add in the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated. Coarsely chop up 20 frozen Reese’s peanut butter cups. I cut them into eighths so that they were well distributed within the cookie bars. You also could definitely use less than 20, I just didn’t want to leave any of them in my house. Mix these into the batter and just mix until they are incorporated. You want to be careful not to totally crush them. (which is why freezing them helps)

Step 5: Spread into a well-greased 13×9 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

Step 6: Let them cool before cutting into (yeah right … just dig in!). These are really delicious. They are very sweet and rich, and the peanut butter cup is a nice surprise when you bite into the bar. It’s going to be sugar high coworker Monday in the office. But at least with the fall back time difference eating cookies at 9am is really like eating them at 10am, which makes it totally judgement free.

Other highlights from this weekend … my mom came up to help me clean and pack my apartment. Only 3 more weeks until I am baking in my new fancy condo kitchen! In cleaning my current kitchen today, I think we discovered where Jerry (the mouse, who is terrorizing me) is sneaking in … under the kitchen sink. So I have now booby trapped that area and we’ll wait and see if he makes another appearance.

We had a nice early morning walk by the water this morning:

Then after more trips to home depot … we drove to CT to drop mom off with Skip (aka Dad) and Grandpa who were at the casino. I got there, and Grandpa asked where his cookies were. He really does know how to rock that hat on the scooter though.

So that’s it for tonight. Back to logging defects and entering content. The glamorous day job of the salted cookie!