Peanut Butter Blossoms -- A Classic Christmas Favorite

With Christmas time comes cookie baking.  They go hand in hand.  It's tradition for my family, and I'm sure many other families, to spend the holidays in the kitchen around the table mixing and rolling dough and watching the cookies bake in the oven.  The intoxicating smell of those delicious cookies just reminds me of Christmas.

Every year we make the same type of cookies that are only to be made around Christmas.  Any other time of the year, it's a sin!  It's just wrong to make a Christmas cookie at any other time of the year.

It would be like watching A Christmas Story in June.  Ya just don't do it!

Plus, not eating something all year makes us look forward to the special cookies we bake together.

Peanut Butter Blossoms are a cookie tradition that my mom has made since I could talk! Probably even before that.  When I got married, it was one of the first recipes I wrote down to make at Christmas.  I think that certainly proves that I've been married for a quite a while if I had to actually write down a recipe and not pin it. But moving on..






It's a classic cookie that I'm sure has been blogged, pinned, and plastered all over the Internet thousands of times.  But that doesn't mean I'm not going to share my recipe here.  No sir.  I'm still sharing it with my readers who actually haven't seen it or don't know the recipe.  Actually, researching the recipe I found that there are a million variations and different measurements for everyone.  So I'm going to share my personal recipe with you all in hopes that this cookie will become a new tradition in your family.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 tbsp. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
48 Hershey Kisses, unwrapped
plate of extra sugar to roll dough in (about 1/4 cup)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large bowl or stand mixer combine shortening, peanut butter, milk, vanilla, and egg.

3. In a separate large bowl combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt.

4.  Add flour mixture to peanut butter mixture and mix until everything is well blended together.

5. Shape dough into a large ball and divide dough mixture into 4 equal parts.  You will need to get 12, one inch balls from each quarter of dough.  

 6. Roll out 1 inch balls and roll in extra sugar.

7. Place dough balls on an un-greased cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart.

8. Bake for 10-12 minutes.  Remove from the oven and immediately place a chocolate kiss into the center of each cookie.

9.  Allow to cool on a wire rack.  Chocolate will harden as it cools.  

Notes:

-Store cookies in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

-Yields: 48 cookies

To Print This Recipe Click Here

Enjoy!