Peanut-Butter Brownie Cookies from 100 Cookies
Move over pumpkin, the neighborhood kids want peanut butter and chocolate for Halloween. A recent article in USA Today shares data from CandyStore.com that says America’s favorite overall Halloween candy is Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. What’s not clear is if all the Reese’s variations are included in this count. In case you haven’t noticed, Hershey’s couldn’t stop at peanut butter cups (available in mini, regular and king size). Anyone who’s ever seen the E.T. Extra Terrestrial movie has a soft spot for Reese’s Pieces. Today, you can lure E.T. with peanut butter cups stuffed with Reese’s Pieces, pretzels, potato chips, and even crunchy cookie bits. I was always partial to the Nutrageous bar, which seems to be hard to find in stores. All this to say that I’ve been craving some peanut butter and chocolate and so turned to my 100 Cookies book. There it was on page 45, Sarah Kieffer’s #9 cookie called Brownie-Cookie with the option of dolloping a spoonful of peanut butter on top before baking. I was hooked. All I needed now was some more peanut butter in my chocolate. I added Reese’s Pieces, M&M’s Peanut Butter candies and some googly eyes. And a fine Halloween cookie was born.
Sarah Kieffer’s Brownie Cookies
The Brownie Cookies are really a brownie disguised as a cookie. Think brownie batter baked up into the shape of cookies. You get the crackly brownie top and fudgy chewy insides all in a cookie. Plus your house smells wonderful as these bake.
Ingredients you’ll need:
¾ cup plus 1 Tbs all-purpose flour
¾ tsp baking powder
3 large eggs
1 ¼ cup granulated sugar
¾ tsp salt
1 Tbs canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 Tbs unsalted butter
8 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
¼ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
How to make:
Mix your baking powder into your flour and set bowl aside.
Melt your chocolate and butter together on top of the stove over low heat. I seem to always have bits of different chocolate in my pantry so I used a mix of 70% and some 60% that I roughly chopped. Once melted, add the cocoa powder and whisk until smooth.
Here’s the fun part. Use a stand mixer to beat the eggs, sugar and salt on medium-high until it doubles in volume and turns a beautiful pale yellow color. This takes 6-8 minutes.
Add the warm chocolate mixture to the whipped egg-sugar goodness.
Next add the flour mixture. Let it sit at room temperature for 5 minutes before scooping.
Time to scoop the cookies. This part got messy for me. Think brownie batter everywhere. I used a cookie scoop to place on parchment lined cookie sheets. However, using two spoons and just dolloping the batter (that’s not as thick as cookie dough) on to the baking sheets may have been easier.
Add your peanut butter. My peanut butter of choice is Adam’s No-Stir Creamy Style. (Don’t use the type that separates and requires stirring). The recipe suggests adding a heaping teaspoon of peanut butter on top of each cookie. I found this to be a little too much so used less and mixed it into the brownie dough with a wooden skewer.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 8-12 minutes. Mine took about 10 minutes. They’ll puff up and develop cracks. Make sure the edges are set before removing from oven.
While warm, I lightly pressed Reese’s Pieces, the peanut butter M&M’s and some random googly eyes on the tops of my cookies. Just let them cool completely on the pans.
You’ll be tempted but wait until they are set to eat one! I’m thinking I could have added Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips into the batter as well. And how about some chopped up mini peanut butter cups. Good idea. I do think these were kind of messy and a bit labor intensive for a cookie. (Or maybe I’m just a messy baker?) But the end result was worth it.
Delicious little fudgy peanut-butter Halloween monsters.
If you want to make these last minute for Halloween, turn on E.T. and whip up a box of Ghiradelli Double Chocolate Brownies swirled with some peanut butter and topped with a handful of your favorite peanut-butter Halloween candies.
If you don’t want to be tempted to eat an entire batch, I recommend adapting this small batch cookie recipe – One Egg White, Seven Salted Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies. Just don’t forget to add the googly eyes.
Happy Hallow👀n!