Saturday, January 03, 2009

Peanut Butter Blossoms...

One of Jeff's nieces was having a birthday at the beginning of the week and he asked if we could make a batch of cookies to send off for her to enjoy. I asked what he had in mind, but he didn't have an answer to that... looking around the pantry, I saw that we had a couple open bags, each half full of chocolate kisses, and I bet you know what I thought of!

We haven't made these in years, but Jeff quickly jumped on board and practically started jumping up and down when he heard me mention we had everything on hand to make Peanut Butter Blossoms!

There seems to be two recipes that are floating around out there for these cookies - one uses slightly less flour and sugar, but notches up the peanut butter by a few tablespoons. I'm pretty sure we've done both before, but since we wanted a bigger peanut punch, we went with the one heavy with peanut butter. The dough will be quite moist, but not so sticky that you can't roll the mixture into clean round balls. For a little sparkle and crunch, the balls are jostled around in a bowl of granulated sugar before heading to the oven. We let ours bake long enough that the tops were puffy, slightly cracked on top and just a light golden hue around the bottom. This kept the cookies on the softer side, but if you wanted them more firm through and through, let them go a minute or two longer.

To make sure the chocolate kisses stick, you want to immediately press them into the cookies when you pull them from the oven. Once you push the kisses down on top, try not to touch them again until the cookies are completely cool so they retain their shape - the chocolate on top will quickly warm up from the residue heat and become quite soft. We used two kinds of kisses - milk chocolate filled with hot cocoa créme and dark chocolate. Both were good, but I preferred the darker chocolate just because I like that bitter quality - I did notice that the filled kiss definitely stayed softer than the dark kiss, which made the cookies a little easier to eat (well, we had to sample some before we sent them didn't we...) !

11 comments:

  1. ooh, i love the hot cocoa kisses in these!! i need to get back to my dark though...

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  2. I made 3 dozen of these for Christmas. So good!

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  3. Oh how I love these cookies-and I haven't made them in eons. With all those yummy kisses flavors...OH MY!
    I have to tell you Jeff-I ran into a great way to keep the shape of the kisses on these kind of cookies..especially the filled ones that can tend to explode every so often-it doesn't look like you had a problem with that at all, but just in case you do.....I unwrap the kisses I'm going to use, put them on a dinner plate and into the freezer they go while I make and bake the cookies. I pop the kisses onto the cookies right from the freezer when the cookies come out of the oven-it's worked PERFECTLY every time for me!

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  4. OK....Joe, I know you made the cookies now, so the Hershey Kiss tip is for you....gosh I need new glasses!!!! :(

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  5. TTFN - They were a fun addition!

    Kimmy - I think another batch will have to be in order soon.

    Carol - Good tip!

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  6. I absolutely love these cookies, but hate the way the kisses seem to fall off when you are trying to eat them. I always put them on upside down to keep them in place. Not as pretty, I know. I guess I have always been more practical than pretty!!

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  7. My hubby is a peanut butter nut and always loves these cookies, great job!

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  8. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!
    That is a wonderful present!!! Anything with chocolate is a good present,hahahaha!!

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  9. These look great, I've never tried hot cocoa kisses before!

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  10. That is so funny. I haven't made these for years and just made some yesterday. I like the idea of using something other than regular milk chocolate kisses. I will have to try next time.

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  11. I don't know why it took us so long to make these again! I'm glad to hear they are still a pretty popular cookie!

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