Chocolate & Peanut Butter. Excellent.

A couple weeks ago my hubby had a pot luck at work. He signed up to bring baked goods, that's where I came in :) Yes, I got to try another cookie recipe! So much fun. I found this recipe over at the Six Sister's Stuff blog. Love their recipes. This one was called Magic in the Middle. For this baking session I got some help from my sis, which was nice!

Ingredients

Chocolate dough
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar (plus extra for dredging)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk
Peanut butter filling
3/4 cup peanut butter, crunchy or smooth (I used creamy)
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

Ready to get started!

Getting started... Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Then lightly grease your baking sheet. (The recipe says to use 2, but I only had 1)

Time to make the chocolate dough...
Using a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Pretty much just get them all mixed together.

Dry ingredients

Next, in another mixing bowl, beat the granulated sugar and brown sugar with the peanut butter and regular butter until fluffy.

Add the vanilla and eggs to the fluffy mix and beat those in as well. 

 You're ready for the dry ingredients! Stir them in. I stirred them in 3 parts, made it a lil easier to work it all in. The dough is going to be very stiff, get ready to use your muscles!

This is how is it will look after lots of stirring!

Moving on to the peanut butter filling...
Very simple, in a small mixing bowl stir the powdered sugar and peanut butter until smooth. Once you have a smooth consistency, put some flour on your hands and start rolling the mix into 1 inch balls. You will make 26. My sis was a big help with this!

Filling time. More stirring!

Rolled and ready!

You're ready to shape the cookies...
Before shaping, get a small bowl and pour some granulated sugar into it, this will be for dredging the balls once they are shaped. Use as much sugar as you need! Next, to ensure you have the right ratio of dough and filling, I would recommend rolling 26 balls of the dough before shaping. We didn't do this and ended up having too much dough at the end. So, once you have your chocolate and peanut butter balls, you're going to make an indent in the chocolate and stick the peanut butter in the middle then work the rest of the chocolate around it. You're pretty much making the peanut butter disappear. Once you have the peanut butter all covered, dunk the ball into your bowl of granulated sugar to coat it and place it on your baking sheet. Continue this process until done! When placing the balls on your baking sheet, they need to be about 2 inches apart so they have room to grow. When you have your baking sheet full, grease the bottom of a drinking glass and smash each ball until they are about 1/2 inch thick.

Covering the peanut butter.

Ready.

Coated in sugar.

Smash!

Bake the cookies for about 7-9 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!

Yum!

These cookies were so fun to make! It was my first time making filled cookies, and I was a bit scared! But the recipe really broke it down and made it simple. The creamy peanut butter filling is so yummy and teamed with the chocolate... even better! Definitely adding this recipe to the must make again list!
Give this recipe a try and let me know what you think! :)