Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies

It's one of my oldest friends birthdays tomorrow so we are indulging in our own version of afternoon tea, all handmade, before heading to the firework display at Shugborough Hall.

As my contribution I originally wanted to make Passionfruit Curd cupcakes after discovering some amazing curd at the Beverley Food Festival a few weeks ago. Alas, I felt that Passionfruit wasn't very in the spirt of Bonfire Night. Instead I made these peanut butter cookies.

The surprise is that hidden inside (or not so hidden on the few that I left in the oven for a minute too long) are little chunks of Mars bar that slowly melt but retain their nougat-y, caramel-y, chocolate-y goodness. The below picture has led to several recipe requests. As I blended a few recipes together (as my fridge is currently egg-less) I thought I'd share my version with you here. 

Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies

Makes 12 - 24

Ingredients:

Some quantities were converted from cups and I improvised so they may seem a little strange.

• 74g light brown sugar
• 54g caster sugar (It should have been 64g and 64g but I wanted to use up my light brown sugar.)
• 64g peanut butter (plus an extra spoon full right before baking!)
• 64g butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 160g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• Splash of milk
• 2-3 Mars Bars chopped into small pieces

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

2. Mix together the peanut butter, sugars, vanilla and butter until well blended.

3. Add the rest of ingredients, and mix well til totally combined.

4. At this point, your mixture is like mine, it will be too dry. I added small splashes of milk until the texture was right for cookie dough. Be careful, you don't go too overboard or it will be too sticky. I added an extra spoonful of peanut butter at this point too.

5. Chill in the fridge for ten minutes whilst you chop (and attempt not to eat) the Mars Bars.

6. Spread a little cookie dough on your palm and mould it around a chunk of Mars Bar making sure that the edges are sealed, then place on a greased/foil lined baking tray. (Bear in mind that the bigger the chunk of Mars bar the bigger the cookie, I did a mixture of big and small - cutting some bars into 8 and others into 16.)

7. Repeat with the rest of the mixture, making sure that the cookies are well spaced on the tray.

8. Bake for 9 - 12 minutes until lightly golden brown. (As you can probably tell my photographs are from Instagram but the first is a good representation of colour.)

5. Leave to cool (if you can wait that long) and store in an air tight container.