Peanut Butterfinger Crunch Cookies

These cookies are SO GOOD.  If you're at all a fan of peanut butter cookies, you will love them.  If you've ever considered eating a peanut butter cookie but went for a chocolate chip instead, you will try them and you will love them.  My mom and her friend spent a summer on a quest to find the perfect peanut butter cookie, and this recipe was the winner.  I'm not really sure where it originally came from, but it came to me via an email from my mom.  I just copied and pasted the recipe, so read it, bake the cookies, and don't waste your time on another subpar peanut butter cookie.  

Peanut Butterfinger Crunch Cookies

 

3/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup golden brown sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter; room temperature

2 lg. egg whites

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/4 cup peanut butter, chunky (do not use freshly ground or "old-fashioned" style peanut butter)

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

5 2.1 oz. Butterfinger bars; cut into 1/2" pieces (about 15 fun size bars)

Chocolate chips 

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease 2 cookie sheets. Blend sugars, butter, egg whites and vanilla until fluffy, stopping once to scrape bowl, about 1 minute. Add peanut butter and mix until combined. Add flour, baking soda and salt and blend until just combined. Stir in chopped Butterfingers. Mound dough by 1 1/2 Tbsp. onto cookie sheets, about 2 in. apart. Flatten slightly. Bake until dry in appearance and centers still slightly soft to touch, about 15 minutes. Cool on cookie sheets 3 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool completely. Store in airtight container.

Start out by putting the sugar in the bowl of the mixer.

And the brown sugar.  

Add 1 stick of softened, unsalted butter.  

Add two egg whites.  In case you're wondering why the recipe says to beat the sugars, the egg whites, and the vanilla together and my picture shows egg whites being poured into an already mixed batter, it's because I'm not good at reading instructions.  

Add 1-1/2 tsp. vanilla.  Or 1/2 tsp. three times if you're lazy like me and don't want to have to wash more measuring spoons than you have to.

Beat for about a minute, until it looks something like this.

Measure your peanut butter.  There are few things as cute as mama and baby cups of peanut butter.  

Okay, okay.  Maybe these guys are cuter.

Regardless of which is cuter, though, we should probably focus on the cookies.  Add the peanut butter, and mix until combined.  

Then add the baking soda and salt to the flour.  I just wanted to show off my new salt container.  I get so annoyed when I'm baking and I have to pour salt out of the little spout and into a measuring spoon.  It always up everywhere, and I waste a ton of salt in the process.  I finally got fed up and bought this $.99 jar at Hobby Lobby.  It is so convenient, and I'm thinking about dropping another buck to get a container for my baking soda.  That little flap on the box will no longer be getting in the way of my measuring spoon.  

Add the flour mixture to the bowl, and mix.

Until it looks like this.  Then you can remove the bowl from the stand.  

Find your lovely bowl of chopped Butterfingers, and try to to nibble on too many before you add them to the dough. 

Dump 'em on in.  

Add a handful of chocolate chips.  I don't think the original recipe called for this, but my mom does it.  And who am I to disagree?

Mix by hand until all of the delicious parts are evenly distributed. 

I used an ice cream scoop to spoon out the cookies.  

Place them about 2" apart.

Try not to eat them just yet.  Raw eggs are nobody's friend.  Except makers of homemade mayonnaise, pisco sours, and body builders.  

Bake for about 15 minutes until they look as good as this. 

Behold the melted Butterfinger bits that have oozed out.  And ignore the weird things my baking sheets do to butter.  

This picture will hopefully influence you to add chocolate chips to your cookies.  I'm sure this cookie would be delicious sans chocolate chips, but would you take a look at that?  I know you want to bite right into it.  

Here are a few more, in case you needed more convincing.  I took some of these over to a friend's for dessert for our pre-class dinner, and they were eaten as both an appetizer and as dessert.  Yum yum yum.