Description
My favorite Peanut Butter Blossoms recipe — made with extra peanut butter, perfectly soft and crackled, and topped with Hershey’s Kisses or peanut butter cups.
Ingredients
- 36 Hershey’s Kisses (or mini peanut butter cups)
- 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt*
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/3 cup granulated (white) sugar, plus extra for rolling
- 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
- 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter*
- 1 large egg
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
- Freeze Hershey’s kisses. Unwrap the Hershey’s kisses (or mini peanut butter cups), place them on a plate and chill in the freezer until ready to use.
- Mix the dry ingredients. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt until combined.
- Mix the wet ingredients. Add the butter, white sugar and brown sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer. (Or alternately, you can use a hand mixer with a large mixing bowl.) Beat the butter and sugars together on medium-high speed for 2 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add in the peanut butter, egg, milk and vanilla extract and beat on low speed for 1 minute, until combined, pausing to scrape down the sides of the bowl whenever needed. Add in the flour mixture and meet on low speed for 1 minute, until combined.
- Chill the dough. Transfer the dough to a sealed food storage container and chill for about 1 hour. (Or see a speedier chilling method in the notes below.)
- Prep the oven and baking sheet. Heat the oven to 375°F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Prep the dough balls. Form the dough into a 1-tablespoon dough balls ball (I find it’s easiest to do this with a small cookie scoop), gently roll the balls in granulated white sugar until evenly coated, and place on the prepared baking sheet at least 2 inches apart.
- Bake. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cookies begin to slightly crack on top.
- Add the kisses. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire cooling rack. Then immediately take the frozen Hershey’s kisses and press them gently into the middle of the cookies. Let the cookies cool to room temperature…then enjoy!
Notes
Salt: If you only have iodized (table) salt on hand, reduce the amount of salt to 1/2 teaspoon.
Peanut butter: As mentioned in the post above, it’s important to use traditional peanut butter instead of natural peanut butter in this recipe to achieve the right consistency.
Quick-chilling method: Instead of waiting for the large batch of dough to chill in the fridge, you can go ahead and form however many dough balls you would like to bake, roll them in sugar, place them on the parchment-covered plate, then place the plate in the freezer for 10 minutes to chill. Then transfer the chilled dough balls to your parchment-covered baking sheet and bake.
Source: Recipe slightly adapted from Hershey’s.
