Peanut Butter Peanut Butter Cookies

I am so, so tired.  But, I survived my first two comprehensive exams of graduate school.  I think.  Whether or not I passed them is another story.  I get to wait another month for that.

This sticker pretty much sums up how I felt on Friday morning before my exam.

I'm in my usual post-exam exhaustion stage.  Except I need to recover by tomorrow when classes start.  Yeah.  That.  My whole summer that I don't have to think about exams is already over.  Ok, that's false.  I'm still thinking about them.  But my summer where I don't have to think about taking exams in the future tense is over.  

After my last exam, we made dinner for PLS and GWS for their anniversary!  I feel like I was pretty pathetically exhausted and not much help.  So really, NES made dinner for them.  I did manage to help with the pizza dough.  

NES made some pretty tasty deep dish pizzas on top of said dough.  Yum.  I was so tired that I didn't manage to take many pictures or take in much of the process.  So, yeah.  No post on the pizzas.

I also stopped at a cupcake place I've always wanted to try out to get dessert!  I got red velvet, chocolate marshmallow, vanilla and chocolate cassis.  They were really, really good.  

PLS and GWS also had stuff to make frappes with creamsicle ice cream.  They were super tasty.  I have decided that celebrating the end of a week of rough exams after a summer of studying for them is the only acceptable reason to have a frappe and a cupcake on the same evening.  As tasty as it was.  It was a lot of dessert.  

And I woke up to the smell of cinnamon bread French toast this morning.  Well, after the couple hours I couldn't sleep.  

We also went to see my favorite musical of all time yesterday.  It was excellent.  

We also wandered around town on this beautiful afternoon with JDR and EM.  Eating ice cream.  Of course.  I also made a quick trip to the farmer's market only to find I could have bought all the vegetables and fruit I got this weekend there.  Oops.  It's hard having it on Sunday morning when we get home from church.  But I did manage to get some spectacular blackberries.  I'm surprised that they made it home. But I did have a early fall McIntosh to eat on the way home.  Maybe that's how I managed to not eat them all.

And I even decided to make myself a fruit salad for this week!  Mmmmmmmm.

So, all in all, I can't complain about my free weekend.  It was pretty epic.  If not exhausting.

Ok, and now back to baking and cooking.  Because, I was able to do a little bit in the last couple weeks.  Surprisingly enough.  Don't ask how.  Or if maybe I should have been studying.

JAB and RB were over last week, and JAB loves peanut butter cookies.  I do too, but I'd rather not have a whole batch sitting around for just NES and I.  So I use JAB and RB's visits as an excuse to make peanut butter cookies.  With Reese's Pieces.  

I found these pudding cookies that sounded excellent.  Soft and chewy cookies are super tasty.  

I decided against adding banana chips (not least because NES doesn't like them . . . I also thought they sounded a little strange).  I added the Reese's peanut butter cup minis (the unwrapped itty bitty ones) instead.  Because you can never have too much chocolate and peanut butter in peanut butter cookies, can you?

I made them giant, too.  I ended up baking them 15 minutes instead of 10.  I actually managed to make a reasonable number of big cookies instead of a million little cookies like I usually end up making.  

And then, I went back to studying.  And studying.  And studying.  But at least I had cookies!

Peanut Butter Pudding Cookies

from Inside BruCrew Life

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tbsp. honey

1 tsp. vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 small pacakge instant vanilla pudding mix

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup Reese's Pieces

1 cup Reese's minis

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  

Cream together the butter, peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, vanilla and honey, mixing until well incorporated.  

Slowly add the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt and pudding mix) and beat until combined, but do not over mix.  

Stir in the chocolate chips, Reese's Pieces and Reese's minis by hand, until well incorporated.

Drop by rounded tablespoons (or bigger) onto a baking sheet.  Press flat.  Bake for 10-15 minutes at 350 deegrees.  

Allow to cool on the pan for 3-4 minutes and cool on a wire rack.