Peanut butter cup fluffernutter blondies

As you know I've developed a sort of love affair with the delicious dessert from the kitchen of Cookies & Cups.  From her salted caramel bars to her caramel swirled M&M brownies, I'm in love.

One of her delights that made everyone at the pigpen smile was peanut butter cup fluffernutter blondies.

They are absolutely delish!

Ingredients

1 cup butter (2 sticks of butter), room temperature

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup peanut butter
2 t. vanilla
2 eggs
1 t. baking soda
2 1/2 cups flour
1 t. kosher salt
2 cups coarse chopped peanut butter cups (10.5 oz bag)
3/4 cup Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Cream

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9x13 pan with cooking spray. 

Cream butter and peanut butter together.

Add sugar and brown sugar to the creamed butter and peanut butter and beat until light and fluffy.

Add in eggs and vanilla on a medium speed.

Stir in baking soda, salt, and flour until just combined.

Fold in the peanut butter cups.

Spread the batter in the pan.

Drop the marshmallow cream on top of the batter.  (This is much more difficult than it sounds.  I used a spoon to scoop the cream from my measuring cup and tried my best to randomly drop it on the batter.)

Swirl the marshmallow cream into the batter with a knife.  (Once again, this is much more difficult than it sounds as the batter is very thick and dense unlike a brownie or cake batter that is much more fluid.)

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the toothpick placed 1 inch from the side comes out clean. 

Cool in the pan on a wire wrack and Enjoy!!!!

MeMe's Peanut Butter Balls

When Big Sissy turned 8 in October, my Aunt D and Cousin R made her a recipe book with family recipes from my dad's side of the family.  In addition to the recipe book, they also gave her all of the ingredients to make MeMe's Peanut Butter balls.  (MeMe was my great grandmother that never let anyone know how old she was.)

Ingredients
6 T. peanut butter
3/4 bag of powdered sugar
1 stick of butter
1 t. vanilla
1 bag of coconut

So Big Sissy opened up a box on her birthday with all of these ingredients including the butter.  She was very excited as she loves to bake.  We decided we would make the peanut butter balls for Christmas.

To make the peanut butter balls you mix together the peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla.

Now this is where is got interesting for us and I don't have any pictures of this as my kitchen soon became a bit messy as the mixer was throwing powdered sugar everywhere.  It was like there was nothing else in the mixing bowl besides the powdered sugar.

After a brief freak out moment, the light went off in my brain.  I wondered if perhaps when calling for 3/4 of a bag of powdered sugar it was referencing the 1 pound bag of powdered sugar and not the 2 pound bag that my Aunt had bought for Big Sissy.  I knew this had to be it so we quickly doubled the recipe and soon we were back in business with a slightly messy kitchen.

So once you have mixed together all of the ingredients but the coconut, roll the mixture into balls.

Then, if desired, roll the balls in coconut and store in the fridge or freezer to keep longer. Needless to say during Christmas break, Big Sissy made 2 batches of these (one being a double recipe) and none made it to the freezer.

Enjoy!