Peanut Butter Explosion Cookies

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 Tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3.4 oz. box instant vanilla pudding

1 cup chocolate chips

1 1/4 cups halved Reese's mini peanut butter cups, divided

1 cup mini Reese's Pieces, divided (or peanut butter M&M's) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat the butter until creamy. Add the peanut butter and sugars and beat again. Add the eggs, honey, and vanilla and beat until mixed in.

Stir together the flour, baking soda, salt, and pudding mix. Slowly add to the butter mixture until everything is mixed in.  Stir in the chocolate chips, 1 cup peanut butter cups, and 3/4 cup Reese's Pieces gently.

Use a 2 Tablespoon cookie scoop to make 36 dough balls. Press the remaining candy into the tops of the dough balls.  Place the dough balls on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Let rest on the hot cookie sheet for 2 minutes, then transfer to a piece of parchment paper. Let the cookies cool completely before storing in a tightly sealed container.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cookies

This is one of my families favorite Christmas treats.  My brother, sister and I have literally pushed each other out of the way at mom's house to get these.  And there have been some pictures to torment each other over the years if we were eating them and someone was not.  

Ingredients: 

1/2 C. soft butter

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 C. brown sugar

1 1/4 C. flour

1/2 C. sugar

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1 egg

1/2 C. peanut butter

1 bag mini Reese's peanut butter cups

Mix together, roll into small balls and put in miniature muffin pan. Bake at 375 for 8 minutes. Put miniature Reese's peanut butter cup in the center of each and let cool for 10 minutes.

Peanut butter pudding cookies

Review by Lyndee:

2 cups peanut butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 small (3-4 oz) package of vanilla pudding

2 cups reeses pieces

Mix together peanut butter and sugar.  Add the eggs, vanilla and pudding mix until completely combined.  Stir in Reeses pieces. 

Scoop out 1 tbsp balls and place on a lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart.  Bake at 350 for 14-16 minutes. 

These were easy to make and made a huge batch! They are a “thick” cookie.  Pretty tasty if you like peanut butter…which, who doesn’t? 

Reese’s Squares

Review by Rachael:

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs

1 lb confectioner’s sugar (3-3 ½ cups)

1 ½ cups peanut butter

1 cup butter, melted

1 (12 ounce) bag milk chocolate chips

Directions:

 Combine graham cracker crumbs, sugar & peanut butter. mix well.  Blend in butter until well combined.  Press mixture evenly into a 9 x 13 pan.   Melt chocolate chips in microwave or double boiler.  Spread over peanut butter mixture.  Chill until just set and cut into bars.

Step one took awhile, it was difficult to get those three ingredients to mix together. But finally I added the butter & got it to look like some form of a layer I could use. The directions didn’t say if you should spray the pan or not, but I did. I figured between peanut butter & chocolate it would probably stick. I made the mistake of letting these chill all night before trying to cut them. Once they are set all the way it’s very difficult to get them cut. They top layer of chocolate was chipping off & they didn’t look very pretty. They tasted okay, not exactly what I wanted from this recipe. I LOVE Reese’s and to me they were nothing like them. Maybe this would be good crumbled over ice cream?! 

Reese’s peanut butter cup rice krispies

Review by Lyndee

Ingredients:

4 peanut butter cups

2 tbsp peanut butter

6 cups of rice krispies

Directions:

Melt peanut butter and peanut butter cups in a pan with butter.  Add 6 cups of rice krispies.  Drop and cool on a sheet or press into a buttered baking dish.  Cut into squares when cool. 

This recipe was wrong.  The people that pinned it are obviously missing an ingredient.  There were way too many rice krispies and not enough goo.  They didn’t stick together.  I even melted some more peanut butter, cups and kara syrup together and added that when I realized they weren’t going to stick.  It helped a little bit but basically you just have flavored rice krispies.  Don’t get me wrong, the flavor is awesome.  Sprinkle this on some ice cream or just eat it with a spoon, but these do not work for bars or cookies.  Total bummer. 

Ice cream sandwich cake

Review by Lyndee

Ingredients

24 ice cream sandwiches

16 oz of cool whip

1 jar(s) caramel sundae topping

1 bag of your favorite candy, coarsely chopped

Directions

Line a 9 x 13 inch pan with foil.  Lay half of the ice cream sandwiches (whole) in the bottom of the pan, trimming the last one to get it to fit.  Top with half of the cool whip, half of the caramel sundae topping and half of the candy.  Repeat these steps again, cover and freeze. 

I only had a few squirts of caramel topping left so I threw on some hot fudge topping as well. I used Reese’s peanut butter cups for the candy.  This was easy to make.  The only thing that took time was unwrapping the ice cream sandwiches and peanut butter cups.  This was excellent! A total hit at Michael’s birthday party.  And the possibilities are endless.  You could use the red velvet, mint or birthday cake batter flavored ice cream sandwiches too and then pick your candy to suit.  Will definitely be making this again this summer and trying the mint version.  Yum!