Peanut Butter Chip Surprise Cookies

Bring these crispy and chewy Peanut Butter Chip Surprise Cookies to your next get together and everyone will love them. A chocolate kiss is pressed inside for a lovely chocolatey surprise to find when biting into these delicious goodies. The peanut butter morsels give it a slight peanut butter flavor that perfectly compliments the creamy chocolatey softness of a chocolate kiss. When fresh out of the oven, the soft gooeyness of the warm chocolate kiss, delightful!

Peanut Butter Chip Surprise Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Gather all ingredients and line a sheet pan with nonstick parchment paper. Parchment paper is optional, but it just makes it for easier cleanup. If not using parchment paper, be sure to use a nonstick cookie sheet or spray your cookie sheet with cooking spray to avoid cookies sticking to the pan.

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter, softened
• 2 cups light brown sugar, packed
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup peanut butter chips
• about 34 pieces of chocolate kisses, unwrapped

Sift flour, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. Set aside.

Cream the softened butter and brown sugar together using a hand or stand mixer on medium-high speed for 2 minutes. First start with slow speed so the ingredients don't fling out of the bowl until it starts to incorporate and then increase to medium-high to finish up. This mixture will be slightly crumbly.

Add in eggs and vanilla extract. Stir using a large spoon or rubber spatula until combined. Fold in flour mixture until just about mixed in, and then mix in the peanut butter chips.

Using a 1 1/2 Tbs cookie scooper or measuring spoon, scoop out dough and press a chocolate kiss into the middle of each dough ball pinching the dough together to completely enclose the chocolate kiss inside. Don't worry about smoothing out the dough to make it completely round, keeping those uneven edges will give your cookies a nice texture and a slight crisp on the outside after baking.

If you don't own a cookie scooper, I highly recommend getting one. It's makes life much easier to portion out the cookies, resulting in them baking evenly with perfectly uniform dough portions. A cookie scooper can be used for many other things too, such as homemade meatballs, mini muffins, cake pops, melon balls, or anything else that comes to mind that is somewhat small and round. There are different sizes that come available, but I find that the 1, 1 1/2, and 2 Tbs are used most often in recipes for cookies. But if you would like to go with just one scooper, I would say opt for the 1 1/2 Tbs scooper. They make for the perfect size of what you want in a cookie, not too big but not too small.

Drop each dough ball that has a chocolate kiss inside onto the prepared pan, keeping them at least 2 inches apart. Bake on center rack of oven for 11-12 minutes or until tops start to become slightly browned. Let cookies cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy that warm gooey centered chocolate kiss complimented with soft peanut butter chips all wrapped up in a crispy and chewy cookie.