Peanut butter blossoms--those nutty, chewy, cookies with a hershey kiss pressed into the top--have always been one of my favorite cookies. Unfortunately, they're also one of the hardest to pack up into a tupperware container and transport. The delicate tips of the kisses get knocked right off.
So it's time for a new take on the peanut butter blossom.
Meet the Peanut Butter Blossom Button.
Peanut Butter Blossom Buttons
(adapted from Hershey's)
Ingredients
Hershey Kisses (one per cookie)
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Demura sugar (for rolling)
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.
Beat the shortening and peanut butter in a medium mixing bowl until you can't see the white of the shortening. Add the white and brown sugars, and beat again until the mixture gets a little fluffy.
Add the egg, milk and vanilla.
Stir together Flour, baking soda and salt (I usually just do this in the liquid measuring cup. Saves on dishes) and add to the wet ingredients. Mix until the dough comes together.
At this point, pull out your mini muffin tin. Take pinches of the cookie dough and roll them into 1-inch(ish) balls. Gently roll the balls in the demura sugar, and pop each ball into a hollow on your mini muffin tin. No need to line it or grease the tin, the sugar should keep the cookies from sticking.
Bake for about 10 minutes. While the cookies are baking, unwrap the chocolates (one kiss per cookie). When you can see cracks form in the tops of the cookies, pull it from the oven. Press a kiss, point down, into each cookie. Once you've finished them all, go back and give each kiss a gentle tap to push it down a little further and cement the two together.
Put the pan back in the oven for another minute or so, then remove. Wait for the cookies to cool before tipping them out of the pan, so that you don't muss the chocolate. Or, if you're in a hurry or short on pans, you can use a butter knife to pop them out and let them cool on a baking tray or paper towel.
Wait for the cookie to cool completely before you pack it up.
Honestly, I think these look more like blossoms (think tulips) than the original ever did.
My recipe made about 42 cookies. Your calorie content may vary slightly, but here's how it came out for me.
A few specific notes:
Normal grocery store peanut butter works just fine for these. I used all-natural, fresh-ground, still warm, peanut butter purchased at my local organic hipstermart. But the shelf stable stuff is great too. Creamy will guarantee a perfect cookie, in my opinion, but you can use crunchy if you don't mind a little extra work while mixing.
And speaking of crunchy, I do recommend picking up some of the demura sugar--sometimes sold as raw sugar. It gives the cookies a rough texture that contrasts with the smooth chocolate.
