These chewy peanut butter cup cookie bars are made with reese's cups, chocolate chips, and a few other pantry staples. Each square is gooey, decadent and so simple to make!
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a 9×13 metal baking pan (with square edges preferred) with parchment paper.
In a large mixing bowl add butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Use a standing mixer or hand mixer to beat together until creamy.
Add eggs and vanilla extract then continue beating until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes), scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally.
In a separate mixing bowl add flour, baking soda, and salt. Whisk together.
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and beat just enough to incorporate.
Add semi-sweet chocolate chips and stir with a large spoon to mix.
Add half of the chocolate chip cookie mixture to the 9×13 baking pan. Flatten evenly into the pan.
Remove the wrappers from the Reese’s peanut butter cups and place them into the pan over the bottom layer of chocolate chip cookie dough. Cut peanut butter cups in half, if needed, to fill as much of the space as possible.
Spoon the remaining dough over the peanut butter cups and press to spread it to cover.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until almost fully set. The top should be evenly golden brown and the center should not jiggle much. These cookie bars are best just a little undercooked.
Once cookies have cooled completely, lift from the pan and cut into bars.
Notes
Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days or freeze for up to 3 months.This recipe yields more dough than a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe - it lends itself nicely to fully covering the pan for the base and then having enough cookie dough to cover the peanut butter cups, too.The cookie bars come out nice and thick and just slightly gooey. Absolutely delicious.Use a piece of plastic wrap or a spatula sprayed with non-stick cooking spray to press the dough into the pan. It tends to be a bit sticky.You could cut these into even smaller squares - I think you could get about 24 squares out of one recipe and they are thick enough, that would still be a good serving size.