I love peanut butter cup cookies for the holidays or any time of the year.  These cookies are so simple you would have to make an effort to screw them up.  I like how fast you can make them plus the cookies always look good and are not messy to eat – unlike some of my other favorite cookies.

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You’ll notice there is no salt listed in the recipe yet it is included in the ingredients picture.  Almost all cookie recipes have salt, including recipes for peanut butter cup cookies. I find salt unnecessary, especially if you use salted butter (which I don’t). I almost never put salt in any recipe I make because I feel we get plenty of salt in other foods we eat.  If you choose to add salt, mix it in with the flour and baking soda.  Most recipes call for 1/2 teaspoon salt.

You will also see I have included heavy whipping cream – this ingredient is optional.  Other recipes do not include it at all or instead have milk listed.  Totally up to you, but I prefer heavy whipping cream.  Plus, I almost always have a little heavy whipping cream in my fridge that I need to use up.

I picked the dark chocolate variety of peanut butter cups, there are now more options than ever before.  Any type of peanut butter cup works as long as it is mini!

Now onto the instructions:

1.) First, preheat your oven to 350.

2.) Next, get out two mixing bowls.  In the smaller mixing bowl stir together the flour and the baking soda.  Then in the second mixing bowl cream together the softened butter, sugars, and peanut butter with an electric mixer.

3.) Add the vanilla extract, egg, and heavy whipping cream to the sugar mixture and beat together.

4.) Slowly add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and beat until everything is incorporated.

5.) You can use your cookie dough scoop (like I do) or your hands to make 40 dough balls to place in your mini muffin tin.  I have an amazing mini muffin tin that has a capacity of 48!

6.) Place the pan in your preheated oven for 8 – 10 minutes. My cookies took exactly 8 minutes. You don’t want to overbake the cookies or it will be hard to press the peanut butter cups in.

7.) While the cookies are baking you will want to unwrap all 40 peanut butter cups so they are ready to go.  Unfortunately, my 12 oz bag only had 39 peanut butter cups, as seen in one of the pictures below.

8.) As soon as the mini muffin tin comes out of the oven place a peanut butter cup in the middle of each cookie and press it down.

9.) Let the cookies cool in the pan.  Later move the cookies to a cooling rack to continue cooling until the chocolate is set before you move the cookies to a storage container. You should easily be able to pop each cookie out of the tin with your fingers.

Like this recipe, take a peek at my oatmeal cream pie cookie cup recipe next!