There’s one way to guarantee a better Friday: bake cookies late on Thursday night.

Recipe based on Averie Cooks’s Peanut Butter Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies.

Gather:
55g butter
1/3 cup peanut butter

1 + 1/4 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla
1 egg + 1 yolk

3/4 cup oats
1 cup choc chunks*

Then:

1. Turn on the oven to 175° C. Chop the chocolate into rough chunks and set aside.
   …
2. In a microwave-proof bowl, melt together the butter and PB. Set aside to cool slightly (so you don’t cook the eggs later).
3. In another medium bowl, sift together the flour and baking soda. Set aside.
   …
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large bowl with hand beaters), mix the PB/butter and sugars for about 3 minutes.
5. Add the vanilla and egg+yolk, mixing til combined. The result should look kind of sticky/waxy (so not at all what you’d expect at the sugar + butter + egg stage).
6. Slowly add the flour. You may need to switch to the wooden spoon quite soon afterwards – this stuff is Really. Heavy.
   …
7. Using a wooden spoon and a strong arm, stir in the oats and chocolate chunks.
8. Roll large teaspoonfuls of the dough into balls, then bake for about 8 minutes per batch.
   

Notes:
These aren’t annoyingly ‘sandy’ like some PB cookies can be. If you want them at the crispy end of the scale, bake for a bit longer, and press each cookie flat with a spatula halfway through baking. If you want thicker, softer cookies, release them from their infernal incubation chamber as soon as they’re dry-looking and just golden.

*I used chopped-up Cadbury Marvellous Creations because, uh, it was already in the kitchen. And because baked-in candy bits surely = extra cheer.