Perfect Peanut Butter Blossoms.
When it comes to peanut butter blossoms, I always use the recipe on the back of the Hershey Kiss bag. Always.
And I really had no intentions of sharing said recipe with you, because while it is my favorite cookie of all time, it’s so well known that I figured most of you had the recipe. And if you didn’t, it’s only a drive to the grocery store away.
So, this may not be as exciting as cake batter bark, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
I posted my holiday baking list and had over one hundred requests for “my” peanut butter blossom recipe. Really?!
So there you have it – my recipe comes from the back of the bag!
But do you know who’s didn’t? Mother Lovett’s. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I would help Mother Lovett bake Christmas cookies every year. Not because she wanted my help. But because she was blind and deaf and unless we wanted charred rocks on Christmas Eve, someone needed to be there to hear the oven timer go off.
Peanut Butter Blossoms were especially tricky, because you had to hear the timer go off the first time to push the kisses in, then the second time to remove the cookies to cool.
This never went well for Mother Lovett, who often ended up with crisp, burnt peanut butter slabs with puddles of chocolate in the middle.
Every year, even though we had a bag of Kisses ready to go, she’d search high and low for that recipe. Â We couldn’t possibly just use the one of the bag, the one right in front of us. Just like some of her others, it is typewriter-typed on a yellowed index card, with a note on the back, “I got 49 cookies in 1999.” That is often how she kept track of how many cookies each batch yielded.
Don’t you just want to dive into that batter?
So here’s the deal. Most peanut butter blossom recipes call for shortening. I do have shortening, but I know that many of you don’t. And why buy it for one recipe? Â I knew that somewhere along the way I had made these with butter before, so I tried them out with butter and it worked perfectly.
Mother Lovett kept most of her cookies stored in the garage, in tattered, worn Horne’s or Kaufmann’s boxes with reused foil and saran wrap. It may sound disturbing, but she kept everything fairly clean – it was that whole depression era thing. Sometimes I wish I caught that gene as I can be so wasteful.
Every December, after the cookies were baked and stored in the garage, it was a race to see which grandchild got into the boxes first. I remember entering her house through the garage and suspiciously opening the peanut butter blossom box, careful not to disturb her perfect wrapping, grabbing a handful of cookies, lowering the box lid and darting up the stairs. Many times the peanut butter blossoms didn’t even make it to Christmas Eve.
Make sure you leave some out for Santa!
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Ingredients
- 2 sticks butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 1/2 cups flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 1/2 cup sugar, for rolling
- 2 bags Hershey Kisses, you only need ~48, unwrapped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Cream butter and peanut butter together until smooth. Add sugars and cream for 2-3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until combined. Stir in vanilla. Add flour, baking soda and salt, just mixing until combined, then add in milk. Cover and refrigerate dough for 30 minutes or up to 2 days.
- Roll cookies into 1 inch balls and roll in sugar. Lay on baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake at 375 for 5 minutes. Remove from oven and push Kiss down into the middle of each cookie. Return to oven and bake for 2 1/2 more minutes. Remove and let cool completely.
Did you make this recipe?
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I appreciate you so much!
Now for the real question. If you could only choose ONE cookie to make this holiday season, which would it be? This would be mine. Hands down.
181 Comments on “Perfect Peanut Butter Blossoms.”
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I just so happened to have a bag of hersheys kisses in front of me at work (guilty) and the recipe on the back calls for 1 pouch of Betty Crocker Peanut Butter Cookie Mix. Do you use that or make your own?? Thanks!!
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it probably is not legal, but the scoohl is just making sure that they are not help liable for anything that may happen. also, while it has got to be terrible for your son, you also have to realize that he would be at almost no risk at all for coming in contact with anything that may cause his peanut allergy to act up. if he is allergic to peanuts, but is still able to come in contact with them, then you should definitely bring this up as being against the law.
THESE ARE AMAZING. There are currently 75 of them sitting on my counter and I may just eat every single one of them.
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Does anybody have trouble with the chocolate kiss melting after cooling? I have done this recipe several times and the chocolate kiss stays really soft days after baking. How can I get the kiss to become firm again without ruining the cookie? Also could use some tips on storage.
Anytime you put the cookie back in the oven with the kiss on top for any length of time, the kiss will stay softer. if you let the cookie bake longer, then take them out and put the kiss on top without returning the cookie to the oven after, your kiss will stay firm and you should not have that problem. Does that make sense? When you put the kiss in the oven you are essentially melting it to a point…therefore it stays somewhat softer. by not softening it up in the first place and just letting your cookie in the oven a tad longer on its own, you aren’t hurting the cookie process, and the kiss stays hard.
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I made these with my daughter yesterday – first time ever making them and they were the perfect cookie to make with a little one! :) Hope you have a wonderful Christmas Jessica, it was a highlight to have finally met you in person this year, although I always regret how little time we actually got to spend with each other. Happy New Year!! xoxo
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could you make the cookies with a pre-packaged peanut butter cookie mix? I am a poor college student & don’t own a mixer or anything. or is a spoon okay to mix all the ingredients together? I want to make these for my boyfriend for valentines day but put the heart shaped chocolates in the middle instead of kisses.
I literally JUST did that- made these without a mixer (although I did use a whisk but I’m sure spoon would be fine if you work hard enough) and used dove dark chocolate hearts… AMAZING. I have also used a mix before & it works just as well. I would have made them for my boyfriend but he prefers boring old box brownies, so I made them for myself!
Symptoms of peanut allergy are related to the action of Immunoglobulin E (IgE) and other anaphylatoxins, which act to release histamine and other mediator substances from mast cells (degranulation). In addition to other effects, histamine induces vasodilation of arterioles and constriction of bronchioles in the lungs, also known as bronchospasm (constriction of the airways)….:;
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Can these be made in advance and frozen?
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Hi there! I just found your blog/this recipe via Pinterest. Made these cookies for a holiday party here in Kuwait City and they were a smashing hit. Thanks for sharing! xo
Delicious! But makes a lot more than 48 cookies! I used a whole bag of kisses and still have dough left! About 6 dozen!
These are delicious! The best peanut butter blossom cookies I’ve ever made. =)
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These are my favorite holiday cookie as well – though sugar cookies with buttercream frosting probably tie. If you aren’t a huge Kiss fan, try topping these with the mini peanut butter cups. To die for!
This recipe is perfect, I come back to it year after year, thank you for sharing!
Hi Jessica…made these cookies this weekend and everything turned out except the Hershey’s kisses melted all over them. I’m not sure why as I didn’t even bother to put them back into the oven after pressing the kisses into them – I just baked them for the full time, removed them from the oven & pressed in the kisses. Any ideas or tips to avoid this problem? Thanks for your help!
Do you use a kitchen aid blender for this recipe? I want to make sure my mixing times are good and I do not overmix!
HI, I want to make some of your recipes (especially peanut butter blossoms) but I am not familiar with some of your ‘terms’ for example, you advise to use 2 sticks of butter. We don’t have butter sticks here so how much in grams do I use? HAve a ncie day. Ann
Hi Ann,
A stick of butter in the US is a quarter pound or 1/2 cup. I’m not sure how many grams it would be but two sticks of butter will be a half pint by volume. Hope that helps!
I just baked this recipe and they are delicious! The only thing I did differently was bake my cookies fully and press the kiss in right out of the oven. The kisses still sufficiently melt a little to glue themselves to the cookie. Can’t wait to share these for Christmas!
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Thank you for posting this recipe. These are by far the best peanut butter blossom cookies I have ever made. They stayed soft till the last one was gone!
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Thank you for this recipe. It is truly delicious and I love that it makes so many cookies!!
I know this was posted years ago but I just discovered this recipe on Pinterest. I am in love with not having to use shortening per your modified recipe (something about that stuff scares me)!
Quick question, can I halve this recipe?
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I make these every year and every year I get quite a few that the kisses get loose and fall off. We put the kisses on the cookies while hot out of the oven. Any suggestions to keep the kisses from falling off? Thanks
hi tiffany! i always bake the cookies for 2ish minutes more after adding the kiss. it helps the chocolate bottom melt into the cookie and hold better!
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Can you freeze the dough and bake later?
i have seen other things online that say you can freeze the dough. Shape them into balls, roll them in sugar. Put them on a cookie sheet in the freezer for an hour, then put them in a freezer bag. Not sure how long you can keep them in the freezer though.
Hi — I have made these for several years but use shortening. One of the things that happens to me is the cookie cracks TOO much when I put the kiss on top. I end up having to squeeze the cookie together a bit right when it comes out of the oven to keep it from breaking when people eat it or stopping it from breaking when I remove it from the cookie sheet. Do you think using the butter method would solve that breaking problem. It looks like yours still crack when using butter.
Just wanted to add–I want mine to crack, just not like they have been doing where they break!:))
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Just made these and ended up with 68 cookies. The first batch I followed the approach of baking part way and adding the kiss and putting back in the oven and those ones ended up flatter/more prone to falling apart then subsequent batches where I just baked the cookies for 10 mins and then pressed the kiss in (which is what the kiss bag instructions say to do). Appreciate that this recipe doesn’t have shortening as I never have that on hand.
Mine made 50 cookies, and a couple more in dough that I just ate! :) A couple comments, you only need one bag of kisses. One bag has at least 70 in there. Also I didn’t like being told to preheat the oven in step one when later it says that they have to be in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or two days!? Waste of energy, especially if preheated for 2 days, lol.
With things as they are this year, 48 cookies is A LOT. Have you paired down the recipe? Normally I’d 1/2 everything, but wanted to ask! Thank you!
My go-to, must bake cookie every year that always gets rave reviews!