Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
Attention peanut butter lovers! These Peanut Butter Cup Cookies with peanut butter cups in the middle are irresistible bite-sized cookies that are soft, nutty, and perfect for cookie trays and gift giving.
If you love the classic peanut butter chocolate combination, then you’re going to love these Peanut Butter Cup Cookies!
They’re soft and chewy bite-sized peanut butter cookie cups made in a mini muffin tin then stuffed with peanut butter cups. A peanut butter lover’s dream!
I’ve been making this peanut butter cup cookie recipe since forever, probably since I discovered it on the back of the Reese’s peanut butter cup bag.
However, the original recipe makes several dozen cookies. A little too much for this small batch baking blog.
That’s why I scaled them down to be another small batch cookie recipe you can enjoy all year long.
I mean, who doesn’t crave small batch peanut butter cookies on a random Wednesday night? Just me?
And these mini cookie cups are so good, you can add them to your Christmas cookie plate and they’d be voted the best cookie of the night.
Which I know small batch cookies and Christmas cookie trays seem like an unconventional pairing, but it allows you to add a variety of cookies one dozen at a time.
Ingredients For Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
Here’s what you need to bake up the perfect mini peanut butter cup cookies:
- All-purpose flour: Due to the limited amount of liquid in the dough, it’s especially important to measure your flour using the spoon and level method rather than the scoop and pack method. Learn more about how to measure flour.
- Baking soda: Helps the cookies rise as well as contributes to the crisp edges and soft middle.
- Salt: It brings out the flavor of the cookie, especially when using unsalted butter.
- Butter: Using unsalted allows you to control the amount of salt in such a small batch of cookies. It also helps the dough spread while baking.
- Peanut butter: I used your typical processed peanut butter because it has the most consistent result. Natural peanut butter can vary in results.
- Brown sugar: It’s important you use fresh, soft brown sugar. Using dry brown sugar will result in a crumbly dough. It also reacts with the baking soda due to its acidity from the molasses.
- Granulated Sugar: Adding white sugar contributes to the cookie’s chewy texture.
- Egg yolk: Using a whole egg adds too much moisture, causing the cookies to be more cakey than chewy. Using an egg yolk not only cuts down on that, it helps bind the dough together.
- Vanilla: Much like salt, vanilla brings out the other flavors in dessert.
- Peanut butter cups: Use the mini kind that’d fit in a mini muffin pan.
Not a peanut butter fan? Check out my chocolate chip cookie cups.
What To Do With Leftover Egg Whites
I know how annoying it is to use 1 egg yolk when you’d rather use the whole egg.
However, using the whole egg in these small batch peanut butter cookies would mean adding too much liquid, leaving you with cakey cookies. And nobody wants a cakey peanut butter cookie.
When you’re done baking, check out my recipes using leftover egg whites.
If you’re really REALLY against having an extra egg white, you can double the entire recipe and use 1 whole egg.
How To Make Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
Homemade peanut butter cookie cups are super easy and quick to make!
- Cream together your butter, peanut butter, and both sugars.
- Beat in your egg yolk and vanilla.
- Add flour, baking soda, and salt gradually until a soft dough forms.
- Scoop dough into 1 tablespoon balls then add to a mini muffin pan.
- Bake at 350F for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
- Press an unwrapped peanut butter cup into the middle of each one.
- Cool for 30 minutes then carefully remove from the pan to finish cooling.
Store leftovers in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
You can also freeze the dough balls or baked cookies for up to 3 months.
More Peanut Butter Cookie Recipes
If you enjoyed these peanut butter cookies with peanut butter cups, check out these other peanut butter cookie recipes (plus one blondie):
Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
Attention peanut butter lovers! These Peanut Butter Cup Cookies with peanut butter cups in the middle are irresistible bite-sized cookies that are soft, nutty, and perfect for cookie trays and gift giving.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/8 teaspoon table salt
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 2 tablespoons creamy processed peanut butter (not natural)
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar (soft and moist, not dry and crumbly)
- 1 large egg yolk, room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 8 unwrapped mini peanut butter cups
- Sprinkles (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 8 cups in a mini muffin pan.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
- In a large mixing bowl on medium-high speed (with paddle attachment if using the stand mixer), beat together the butter, peanut butter, sugar, and brown sugar until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute.
- Scrape down the bowl then beat in the egg yolk and vanilla.
- Turn the speed down to low then gradually beat in the flour mixture.
- Scoop the dough into 1 tablespoon balls then place in the pan. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown and puffed.
- Immediately place a peanut butter cup in the center of each one, gently pushing down. Cool for 30 minutes then remove from the pan and cool completely.
If using sprinkles, wait 15 minutes for the chocolate to melt then add on top.
Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
Notes
- If doubling the recipe, use 1 whole egg instead of 2 egg yolks.
- For a non peanut butter version, check out my Chocolate Chip Cookie Cups.
- For more peanut butter recipes, check out Small Batch Peanut Butter Cookies, Peanut Butter Cookie Bars, and Peanut Butter Blondies.
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Happy Monday. Yum! I’ve been waiting for this. Thank you.
Hope it was worth the wait! :D
ah yes-these are one of the cookies I always make a beeline for during the holidays! There’s peanut butter sooo duh :P
I had a feeling you’d love these ;)
These look like heaven!
Thank you! Let me know if you try them.
Only made 6 and the dough was very dry. Seems like too much flour. We’ll see how they turn out. In the oven now
How did the cookies turn out?
They tasted great but were kind of stodgy due to the dryness of the dough (plus i probably rolled them a little larger than 1 inch). They also only made 6 cookies
The dough was really crumbly and didn’t mix well after adding flour. Do you think reducing the flour would fix it?
Sounds like you only got 6 cookies because you made the dough bigger than 1 inch. As for the dry dough, what kind of peanut butter did you use, what size egg did you use, how did you measure your flour, and was your brown sugar soft or crumbly?
1 large egg (yolk only)
Used skippy natural peanut butter
Used swerve brown sugar (moist and soft) and granulated sugar (kind of dry and powdery…this was probably the issue, but i like my cookies to be sugar free.)
As for the flour, i used the scoop and level method, as i don’t have a scale.
Ok I had suspected some of these answers. To ensure your dough isn’t dry:
1 – This recipe is made with standard processed peanut butter. Sometimes natural peanut butter becomes too dry and crumbly because the oil separates. If the peanut butter is dry, then the dough becomes dry.
2 – Can’t speak for sugar substitutes because I don’t use them. If the swerve sugar is dry and powdery, it’s possible it absorbed too much of the moisture in the dough.
3 – Scooping the flour can result in measuring too much flour. You want to spoon the flour into your measuring cup rather than scooping the cup. You can read more here: https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/how-to-measure-flour-the-right-way/
I did use the flour measuring method you described and the natural skippy peanut butter i used doesn’t need mixing and doesn’t separate (or else i wouldn’t bother), so that just leaves the powdery Swerve granulated sweetener.
What would you recommend to moisten cookie dough in the future, if it happens again? Add water or maybe add just a bit less flour? I do like this recipe a lot and these cookies bring back childhood memories, so it would be great to know a way around the issue.
Thanks for talking me through it :)
Hmm you can probably add a drop of milk, but I’d be careful not to add too much.