Peanut Butter Butterfinger Cookies from The Food Charlatan

Peanut Butter Butterfinger Cookies - made dough November 1, 2023 from The Food Charlatan 

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup peanut butter (not natural peanut butter)

1 large egg

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

16 ounces Butterfingers, coarsely chopped

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth and creamy. Add granulated sugar and brown sugar, beating for 2 minutes until fluffy. Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl to keep mixture even textured.
2. Add peanut butter and mix to combine. Add egg and vanilla, beating until just combined.
3. Add flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, mixing on low speed until just combined.
4. Fold in chopped Butterfingers until evenly disbursed. Portion dough into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill for 15-60 minutes.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space chilled dough balls. 
6. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes or until edges are set and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

It's National Candy Day (November 4). I don't know where these food holidays come from but I assume this particular one coming so close on the heels of Halloween had some kind of purpose. Like to remind people to use up their leftover Halloween candy in some way?

Okay, maybe not but that's what I'm going with. I had moved to a new neighborhood earlier this year so I didn't know what to expect in terms of trick or treating. Last year in Las Vegas, I had literally no kids show up at the door. The year before, in my old house in Reno, I had so many kids I ran out of candy. Eeek.

I'm not into the costume part of Halloween for myself but I am all about the candy. And for the past few years, I've been buying the full-size candy bars from Costco. Because candy and kids, right? It's once a year so why not be that house that gives out the full-size bars? 

Not wanting to risk running out, I stocked up on 4 boxes of candy bars. Which means I had 100 bars to give out. Then, come Halloween night, I had 25 kids trick or treat at my door. Oops, overshot that estimate by 3 miles.

But it does mean I have plenty of candy bars to incorporate into my future baking. So here we are. I'm not a big Butterfinger fan (what's with all those flakes?) so I had to look up recipes on how to use up Butterfingers on pinterest and found this recipe.

Chop up Butterfinger bars, which was not easy as the layers crumbled into, well, crumbs. Then add to the dough. When you bake anything that has a caramel-ish component, prepare for leakage in the cookies. Which means the cookies can come out misshapen. This is where using the swirl trick comes in handy. Take a round cookie cutter larger than the cookies and swirl each cookie around it as soon as they come out of the oven while they're still hot. All the cookies you see pictured were misshapen out of the oven but I swirled them to neat roundness as soon as I could.

I have to confess, much as I don't like Butterfinger candy bars, this was an excellent cookie. Didn't spread much, swirled nicely round, great texture and good flavor. Let the cookies cool completely before trying them so the Butterfingers will add a little crunch rather than be melty-chewy. This might be the only way I'll eat a Butterfinger. This one's definitely for both peanut butter lovers and Butterfinger lovers. But even if you're not either, this was really good.