Holiday Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Peanut butter cookie cups are delicious holiday treats of peanut butter cookie dough baked into mini cups and stuffed with a mini chocolate peanut butter cup.  These cookies are perfect for any festive occasion and completely easy to make!

If you asked me what’s my favorite cookie, it would be “cookie cups”! You get all the incredible flavor of a baked cookie and a scrumptious filling, like these peanut butter cup cookies. A rich peanut butter cookie baked into a cup and filled with a chocolate peanut butter cup. Eating while still warm and the chocolate is melty…it’s decadent, plain and simple.

You are going to love making these easy holiday favorites. The peanut butter cookie dough is very soft and workable, and it’s rolled into balls with your hands. They make a wonderful presentation on your cookie tray too!

Ingredients needed to make Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

You probably have most of the ingredients in your pantry already!

• Peanut Butter – we used creamy peanut butter to make these incredible cookie cups. If you love crunchy peanut butter (or it’s what you have on hand) use that instead.
• Butter – we always use unsalted butter for our recipes so WE control the salt!
• Granulated Sugar – white sugar adds sweetness to the dough.
• Brown Sugar – for sweetness, subtle maple flavor and moisture.
• Eggs – binds the elements of the dough and helps it rise.
• Vanilla Extract – a flavor staple in baking!
• Flour – we used everyday all-purpose flour…nothing fancy here!
• Baking Powder – helps the cookies rise. Make sure your baking powder is fresh! Drop a spoonful of your baking powder into a cup of hot water…if it bubbles up your powder powder is good to go. If it doesn’t bubble, it’s time to buy a new can.
• Mini Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups – we used the kind that are wrapped in foil. The hardest part of this recipe was unwrapping 24 of these and NOT eating them!

How to Make Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

After mixing the dough ingredients, you’ll have soft, workable dough. Roll into 1-1/2 balls and place in a mini muffin tin.

Make cookie cups by pressing down on the center of the partially baked dough with the round bottom of a spoon. The round bottom of a tablespoon measure, like this copper measuring spoon set, works especially well.

Tips For Making the Best Holiday Cookies

The best tip for making any baking recipe is to measure your ingredients as accurately as possible, and making sure your ingredients are at the right temperature for blending. Baking is really just the science of how measured, blended ingredients respond to heat, so accuracy matters…a lot!

1. Use a spoon, not the measuring cup, to over-fill powdered or ground ingredients into your measuring cup, then use a knife to scrape the excess off the top. Spoon filling helps to keep dry ingredients from compacting in the measuring cup. This method works well for powdered sugar, baking powder, soda and ground spices, too.
2. Make sure to use softened butter and room temperature eggs. If you forget to take them out, here are shortcuts for warming butter and eggs to save you some time.

Room Temperature Ingredient Shortcuts

• Warm the butter, in it’s wrapper, in the microwave. Microwave on High for 5 second intervals, turning the butter over each time. No microwave? First, cut the cold butter into cubes. That’ll give it more surface area to warm. Get out a large mug and a paper towel. Pile up the butter so it will fit under the mug, or do this method in batches. Run water until it is very hot. Fill the mug with the hot water and wait for the outside of the mug to feel warm. Then quickly dump out the water, wipe it dry with the paper towel and sit it upside down over the butter. The heat will transfer from the mug to the butter and gently soften it.
• To warm eggs to room temperature, fill a bowl with warm (not hot) tap water and place the eggs in the bowl. Let the eggs sit in the bowl for 4 – 5 minutes until the egg shell is no longer cool to the touch.