peanut butter blossoms - with a side of tar

I feel like all of these entries are somehow connected. This recipe sprung up while I was reading the back of my Christmas-colored Hershey’s Kisses bag (needed for the Rice Krispy House). I absolutely love peanut butter and all things incorporating nuts in general. This cookie was to be a part of my Christmas-cookie-gift-box (a.k.a. an excuse to bake a ton of cookies).


This is probably my hundreth time saying this, but my boyfriend gave me my Christmas/birthday presents early, majority of which were bakeware. Look at these beautiful Martha Stewart mixing bowls in adorable colors! These were much needed, because one of my mixing bowls was a tiny Christmas-themed bowl (which I stole from his house) and another was a broken plastic bowl from the dollar store which wouldn't allow me to use my hand-mixer. These bowls now belong to my Martha Stewart collection (fellow members include my silpat mat and my sifter).


I find it funny that my first use of these snazzy mixing bowls is to make peanut butter cookies (which he hates). Whatever, I still love peanut butter, and the world doesn't revolve around him.

My usual dough taste-testing came out positive- Absolutely delicious. Dough was stuck in the fridge (along with all my other batches). At the end of the week, there were like 5 huge wrapped up balls of dough because I, being the obsessed baker, couldn't wait until the end of Finals week to do this and insisted on taking hour breaks in between studying to make dough.


Skip to the following week and ta-da! My peanut blossoms have blossomed.


Yes, as gross as it may seem, these were the salvaged Kisses off the Rice Krispy House). I thoroughly washed them and made sure they were clean before placing them.


Unfortunately, there was yet again another mishap (which I do not take full blame for). Recipe said to roll 1 inch dough ball in granulated sugar (which I did) and then to place on parchment paper (which I did not). I was rushing to pack my bag and forgot to grab parchment or my silpat mat. I'm assuming this is what led the bottoms to completely burnt (not to mention ruin one of my new cookie sheets I got as a present). Luckily I refused to surrender, and I got a knife and cut each and every burnt bottom off.


Another Christmas-family-photo for the books.

---RECIPE---
I took the recipe off of the back of the Kisses bag, but here is the one from Hershey's.

ingredients:
48 HERSHEY'S KISSES Brand Milk Chocolates
1/2 cup shortening (gross, I use butter)
3/4 cup REESE'S Creamy Peanut Butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1+1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Granulated sugar

directions:
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove wrappers from chocolates.
2. Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 cup granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.
3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately press a chocolate into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

amount:
Makes about 4 dozen cookies. (I made way less because I knew I had only a handfull Kisses so I rolled the balls slightly larger than 1 inch)