I’m involved in a cookie swap tomorrow so I headed over to Tasty Kitchen to find some inspiration. These immediately caught my eye and after making them this morning, I can tell you these are perfect for cookie swaps, holiday parties and lonely Friday nights.

The recipe said it would yield 36 cookies but it made 72 for me. Weird! Yes, I made them a little smaller than usual because I used a mini scooper to portion out the cookies, but they’re definitely not half the size of regular cookies. Anywho, that’s one of the reasons that this recipe is perfect for a cookie swap.

Ingredients:

1 cup of salted butter (2 sticks), softened but not melted

1 cup of creamy peanut butter

1 cup of granulated sugar

1 cup of light brown sugar

2 extra-large eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

3 cups of all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt (Original recipe does not call for this but I think it should have. So there.)

1 bag (12 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chunks or chips

1.5 cups broken up pretzel pieces

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside. Break up pretzels in a ziploc bag and set aside.

Microwave butter for 30 seconds until it’s softened. Add to the bowl of an electric mixer and combine with both sugars and peanut butter. Mix until well combined.

Add both eggs and vanilla and mix until combined. Gradually add the flour mixture until everything is incorporated. At this point my mixer started growling at me like, “Don’t even think about adding one more ingredient to this bowl.” Add the chocolate chips and pretzel pieces and stir together to combine. Apologize to mixer.

This was the first time I used my mini-ice cream scoop (this is not the one I actually have, but you get the idea) to portion out the dough and even though my cookies came out a little funny looking, I would do it again. It was cleaner and faster and I licked my fingers a whole lot less.

Bake at 350 for 10-13 minutes until the cookies are lightly browned on top. Let them cool for a minute on the pan and then move to a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy with milk!