Chewy Peanut Butter Milk Dud Cookies

I own more cookie cookbooks that I would ever admit to. It's comical, really. These cookies were found in one of my Taste of Home Christmas Cookie books. You can find the original recipe here. As I have mentioned a million times before, Brad loves peanut butter cookies. Peanut butter cookies wrapped around a chocolate and caramel Milk Dud make him even happier. Let's commence baking, shall we?

You will need: 1-1/2 cups butter-flavored shortening, 1-1/2 cups peanut butter, 2 cups sugar, divided, 1-1/2 cups packed brown sugar, 4 eggs, 3-3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1 package (10 ounces) of Milk Duds. Make sure that the eggs and shortening are room temperature.

Cream together the shortening, brown sugar, 1-1/2 cups of the granulated sugar and peanut butter. Beat together until light and fluffy.

There are a lot of ingredients in here at the moment, so be sure to scrape down the sides with a spatula. Add the eggs in, one at a time. Make sure that the egg is completely incorporated before you add in the next.

Sift together the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix together.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to your peanut butter mixture. Do not over mix! Mix until just incorporated and then turn off the mixer. You want these to be light and fluffy.

You will now need to refrigerate the dough for at least an hour. I turned it out into a bowl and covered it with Saran Wrap for a few hours.

OK, is the dough chilled? Great. You will need the reserved 1/2 cup of granulated sugar and the Milk Duds. You might also want to preheat your oven to 350 degrees. OK, let's roll. Get it? Roll? Let's roll???

We all know how fantastic I am at guessing how much dough to use when rolling cookies into balls. The original recipe says 4 teaspoons. Huh. I have no idea. I just grab some and then add a little, take a way a little. You want just enough to cover the Milk Dud with a little cushion. You'll figure it out.

**If you want to freeze these** Stop after you have rolled the peanut butter dough around the Milk Dud. This recipe makes 8 dozen of these amazing cookies, which makes it ideal to bake some now and freeze some for later. Once you have rolled the peanut butter dough around the Milk Dud, place the balls of cookie dough onto a plate (or cookie sheet depending on the size of your freezer). Place it in the freezer until they are frozen through. Once they have frozen individually, you will be able to transfer them to a Ziploc Freezer bag without worrying that they will all stick together. The frozen cookie dough will stay good for 2 months.

When you are ready to bake them, just pop them in the refrigerator the night before you need them and carry on with the recipe.

Roll the peanut butter dough in the 1/2 cup of granulated sugar until they are covered.

Place them a few inches apart on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake these for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees.

And voila! Chewy, peanut buttery, caramal-y, cookies. Enjoy!

Coming up: Lemon - Blackberry cupcakes, GCD Studios Sneak Peeks and Mosh Posh June layouts! Have a great Monday!