First of all I have to wish a very belated birthday to my wonderful hubby, Mark, who entered his next year of life on Wednesday.  Of his 36 years on this earth, I’m sure he will tell you the last nearly 10 years have been by far the best, right honey?  Right?!?! 

One thing you must know about Mark is that he is a peanut butter fanatic.  He’s actually received huge vats of the stuff as gifts.  People are always bringing him new PB candies, suggesting desserts and the like as he’s got a bit of a reputation.  So each year I try to come up with some new PB confection for his birthday.  There have been a couple of good ones and a couple not so great ones.  Last year, I struck gold and he asked me to repeat the recipe.  So on Tuesday night I whipped up a batch of these bad-boys: Mark’s Xtreme PB Birthday Cookies.

Basically they are just two peanut-butter cookies smooshed together with PB frosting.   But, hoo-boy those suckers are fierce!  They are ridiculously rich, sinfully delicious and all around decedent.  Most of the time Mark comments that some PB thing he has just eaten is “not peanut-buttery enough” but there is no such complaint after one of these wonderful treats. 

Mark’s Birthday Cookies for this year were made using this recipe minus the chocolate and peanut butter chips.  These cookies were perfect – chewy on the inside, crispy at the edges.  This recipe will defiantly be sticking around.  Based on making this item as a sandwich cookie before, I made half of the cookies with the traditional fork criss-cross for the tops and the other half were flattened with the bottom of a measuring cup for the bottom of the sandwich; this made them lay better on the plate. 

The filling is, I believe, a Barefoot Contessa recipe which was given to me by Amanda at KickyBoots after reading one of her posts last year (I can’t find the post, sorry!).  I have modified it a bit to use chunky pb and just a tad more cream.  This fantastic concoction would be heaven on chocolate cupcakes, but it also is amazing just on a spoon (or a finger). I had planned to coat the “insides” of the cookies with melted chocolate but decided against it due to time constraints and wanting the cookies to remain pure peanut butter. 

I do have to warn you that these cookies are extreme and they get inhaled instantly.  Mark usually takes them to his office on his b-day and they last 10 minutes tops.  Considering the fact that they have approximately 18 gazillion calories they are a good thing to share.