Quick Thanksgiving Treat: Peanut Butter Cookie Cups

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So it’s been forever since I’ve blogged, and I can’t believe it’s been over two months since I blogged on FOOD!!! I guess once my garden is over I give up on new recipes! The work grind leads me to my dinner boxes, which makes life so much easier as it eliminates meal planning, but then my kitchen creativity suffers (but I learn great new recipes and new techniques via my meal boxes—you gotta follow my Instastories for the great recipes I get to try!). But I digress—Thanksgiving is around the corner, which means that I must bring out the cooking creativity again, but if I’m honest, this creativity was totally from my mom. We had our Thanksgiving Feast at work on Friday, and my least favorite day of the week to cook is Thursday. I don’t even cook for myself on Thursday (total leftover or frozen pizza day). But I didn’t want to look like a total loser that can’t cook (which really isn’t the case), so I thought about what I could make that was good. I briefly entertained making the infamous Potato Pierogi Lasagna (which is an absolute winner I must share—maybe for the holidays), but it’s really hard to keep hot for a mid-day lunch potluck at work. My mom gave me this idea for a super easy and super quick dessert to bring that looks so pretty for presentation but is delicious. I’m sure some other blogger has shared this, but I did it after quickly talking to mom and pulled it together without following anything exactly, so here you go!

You will need:

A pack of Peanut Butter Cookie Break and Bakes (you can find in the refrigerated section)

A bag of miniature Reese Peanut Butter Cups UNWRAPPED (unwrap prior—makes the recipe work better)

A bag of candy corn

A mini muffin tin

1) Preheat your oven following the directions for oven temperature on the Break and Bake cookie pack

2) In an ungreased mini muffin tray (it must be mini), place each break and bake cookie in each muffin compartment. I experimented using muffin papers (as the gold ones I had on hand were very pretty), but I highly recommend NOT using them. They do not bake thoroughly and do not bake more like the cookie you need for this recipe. Don’t worry—-these hold up better than cupcakes.

3) You will want to bake the cookies for about 9-13 minutes. It all depends on your oven. Mine were ready for the peanut butter cup after about 11 minutes. You want them lightly brown (but not completely or overly done) prior to pulling them out of the oven.

4) Once baked to the above description, take out of oven and quickly place Reese cups in the center of each cookie. As I mentioned in the ingredients above, it’s important that the Reese cups are unwrapped prior to doing this—it makes this step go more quickly and correctly.

5) Put the cookies back in the oven for about 1-3 minutes. I put mine in for one minute. This allows the cup to melt just slightly enough to meld to the cookie without being completely melty and losing the Reese cup shape in the middle. This also allows the cookie to finish baking to just the right consistency.

6) Lastly, take out of oven and place fun and decorative candy corn in the middle. This is an optional step, but I think it makes it look super cute! You can change up the candies based on the holiday or season.

7) Let cool prior to removal. These were super easy to get out.

Voila! You are done! You can figure out the best way to plate these based on what you have and the holiday. I liked how this looked on my wood serving platter with some cute mini pumpkins for presentation.

You can purchase a similar serving tray (which I bought at Target) below.

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