Peanut Butter Blossoms

peanut butter blossoms, peanut butter cookies, currently crushingIn between holiday parties, last minute shopping, a wine-bar dinner with our neighbors and throwing a tennis ball a million times for Elke, I did some holiday baking and made batches of my most-requested cookies: Homemade Oreos and Peanut Butter Blossoms.  Of the two, these chocolate peanut butter bites of heaven are the easiest no-fail cookies you can make.  Here’s what you need to make them:

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of creamy peanut butter

2 sticks of room temperature butter

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

3 1/2 cups of flour

2 teaspoons of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons of milk

1/2 cup of sugar to roll the cookies in

48 unwrapped Hershey Kisses

First up,  cream the butter and peanut butter together until smooth (I use a hand mixer)  then add sugar and brown sugar and continue mixing until creamy – about 2-3 minutes.  Stir in the vanilla.  Add the flour, baking soda and salt, mixing until they’re combined then add in the milk.  That’s it!  I usually cover the bowl and keep it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

When you’re ready to bake these just preheat your oven to 375 degrees and roll the dough into 1 inch balls and then roll them lightly in sugar.  Mine look like this right before I put them in the oven:

peanut butter blossoms, currently crushingBake them at 375 for 5 minutes on the middle rack or higher so the bottoms don’t get too brown.  Remove them from the oven and gently push a Kiss down into the middle of each cookie.  Be careful not too push it all the way down, just enough to make those little crack marks:

peanut butter blossoms, currently crushingReturn to the oven for 2 1/2 more minutes them remove and let them cool completely.  This recipe makes about 48 cookies. I hope you’ll try these and let me know how they turn out!