Saturday, December 18, 2010

Peanut Butter Blossoms

I have finally entered the modern age of baking with a Kitchenaid stand mixer! The only bummer is that I had to get it in white. I would have preferred a color, but the ones that had color options were a lot more expensive, so... oh well. I have already made three different kinds of cookies today! Don't worry, they are mostly for this holiday potluck thing at work we're having in a couple days, so they're not all for me. That would be crazy. So what did I make?

I made some peanut butter balls, soft pumpkin cookies, molasses cookies (a gluten-free variety!), and these peanut butter blossoms.

Peanut Butter Blossoms by freshfromthe.com

I'm sure everyone has had these at some point in their lives. They were always one of my favorites to make as a kid. I found an interesting variety of different recipes online, and kind of just tweaked one to go with the ingredients I wanted. I also halved it, because 48 seemed like way too many. Actually I halved all the recipes today, otherwise it would just have been too much of a cookie explosion up in here.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

Ingredients:
48 Hershey's kisses
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
extra sugar to roll in

Preheat oven to 375F.

Mix together the peanut butter and the shortening until smooth. Add in the sugars, egg and vanilla and mix until incorporated. In a separate bowl (if you so desire, I rarely do), mix together the flour, salt and baking soda. Stir in the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.

Roll dough into 1-inch balls, rolling them each in sugar and placing them about 1 inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes. While they're baking, unwrap the Hershey's kisses. Once you take them out of the oven, each cookie gets one kiss in the middle. Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

In pictures...


This is the peanut butter and the shortening.


And this is after everything else is put in. I forgot to take a photo of the in between step. It looked much the same, you're not missing a lot.


Here they are, all rolled in sugar and ready to go in the oven.


You'll notice they do not get a lot bigger, so you can't make them too small or the kisses won't fit. Here you can see some plain ones before kisses, and a few after.


Mmmmmmm..........


These cookies are especially good for those who like Hershey's kisses. I am not a huge fan of just plain chocolate like that, so I am not quite as gung-ho. But like I said, these aren't for me, they're for a party!

6 comments:

  1. I thought I was the only person who loved to bake who still operated with the good ol' fashion hand mixer! I've been holding out for the stainless steel one and I finally hope to get it in 2011!! YAY for your mixer!! I'm sure it's going to result in way more baking!

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  2. stainless steel stand mixer that is.

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  3. That's wonderful! What a great birthday present. Do you love it? Now, the very first thing to put on your Christmas list - a beater blade. Trust me. I know it doesn't seem possible, but it will make your mixer even MORE simple to use.

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  4. @Shunta - Yes, it has been something of a challenge to keep working with a hand mixer sometimes. Hope you get the joy of a stand mixer next year!

    @Brittany - So far it has been great! I just looked up the beater blade, and yes that looks like it would make things that much easier. Scraping action! I just told Steph you had recommended it, so who knows! ;)

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  5. I use a hand mixer too. Funny I found this tonight-- I made the chocolate mint version of the blossoms. Took pics too, which I should post over at my blogger. Chocolate cookies, candy cane kisses. And I used red and green sugar to roll the dough in before cooking. They're quite festive.

    Saw this, thought you might enjoy as much as I did: http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2010/12/supernatural-10-questions-that-have-us-hunting-for-answers.html

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  6. Those cookies do sound very festive and fun!

    Thanks for the link - it raises some very good questions!!

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