Reese's Peanut Butter Cookies

The other day I received a text from Y while he was in class: “What are 3 traits that describe me?” Little did I know, he had been given an assignment to write an essay regarding the subject.
I quickly took the first two I thought of and replied, “Loyal, valiant and …” I paused a second and instead of writing courageous, I finished with “funny”. I don’t think he’s more funny than courageous, but he thinks he’s funny, and I’m sure he appreciated the fact, that I would use funny as a word to describe him. :)
But truthfully, he is very courageous. Today he will do something requiring a lot of courage. He is trying out for the Varsity Basketball team. He has already been cut by the program 3 times. He’s been watching this coach long enough to know, he never picks a kid back up after he’s been cut, despite improvement. Nevertheless, Y wants to see how he can compete with 4A Varsity basketball players. And doing so in this format, takes a lot of courage.
So how does a mom even begin to show her support?
I need to make something out of the ordinary--something that shows how proud I am of his courage.
Y doesn’t like me to use the word “posh”. He tells me nobody knows what it means. I’ve told him -he knows what it means because I’ve told him what it means. So I use it, just to get the dimpled grin and head shake that always follows. Today, I’ll make posh peanut butter cookies. I’d love to take credit for the idea, but my sister has already made them. She has a design blog, not a food blog, so I’ll get the glory of posting this recipe and sharing it with you.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookies

Make Peanut Butter Cookies -

1/2 cup shortening (Butter Flavored Crisco)
½ cup soft butter
1 cup peanut butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter, Crisco, and peanut butter with brown sugar. Stir in eggs and vanilla. Add dry ingredients and fully incorporate. Roll into balls. Don’t criss- cross them with a fork or press them down before baking. You want them to puff up a bit. I put them on the pan as a ball and barely mold to make a thick disc. I like about a 1.5 inch ball that makes about 28-30 cookies per the recipe. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 min.

Immediately after you pull them from the oven, leave them on the pan (I recommend an aluminum baking sheet) and press a chilled Reese’s peanut butter cup in the center of each one. Once I have them all out of the oven, I gently heat 1/3 cup peanut butter in a quart size freezer strength Ziploc bag. Snip a hole in the corner, and drizzle each cookie with peanut butter. Follow that with drizzling each cookie with melted Hershey bars (2 of the 1.55 size). I let them set a bit and then remove them from the pans.

These are my new favorite cookies! I know Y will appreciate a bit of thoughtfulness his direction today as I cheer for him from my kitchen!!