Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies
Peanut butter blossom cookies are perfect any time of the year. These soft, yummy peanut butter cookies are topped with Hershey’s kisses and are so easy to make with this shortening-free recipe.
What’s a cookie recipe that makes you think of your childhood? For me it’s peanut butter blossoms! I can remember rolling out the dough with my own mother, and being so excited to place the milk chocolate Hershey’s kiss at the very end. It’s a recipe that I’ve just started making with my own children too.
Peanut butter blossom cookies are easy to whip up from scratch and are a yummy treat for special occasions, holidays or just want you need a cookie break.
Many peanut butter blossom recipes call for shortening, but personally this isn’t something we usually keep in our pantry, so this recipe was created with that in mind! Let’s bake up a batch together!
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What You’ll Need to Make Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies
You’ll find the full peanut blossoms recipe below, but here are a few quick notes about the ingredients before we get started.
Peanut Butter: The basis of the perfect peanut butter blossom is, you guessed it: peanut butter! However, I really recommend that you use a regular peanut butter, like Jif or Skippy, instead of an all-natural peanut butter for this recipe.
All-natural peanut butter behaves differently in recipes for baked goods sometimes, and I’ve found that it can affect the flavor and texture of the cookies. I personally also like to use creamy peanut butter, but you can absolutely use chunky peanut butter if you prefer that.
Butter: I recommend using unsalted, room temperature butter as the peanut butter also has salt in it already. It’s important you bring the butter to room temperature before trying to mix it in, as if it’s too hard it won’t combine easily.
Sugar: This recipe uses both granulated white sugar and brown sugar. You can use either light brown sugar or dark brown sugar.
Eggs: Eggs help to bind all of the dough ingredients together.
Vanilla extract: I swear by this ingredient! It really complements the ingredients and adds a little something extra to the flavor.
Flour: I used a traditional all-purpose flour for this recipe, but you can also use gluten-free all-purpose flour, too.
Baking soda and salt: Double check you’re using baking soda and not baking powder!
Unwrapped Hershey’s Kisses: You can use any variety of Kisses or any brand of peanut butter cups that you prefer.
How to Make Peanut Butter Blossoms
Making these peanut butter kiss cookies is so easy. Preheat the oven and cream the butter, sugars, vanilla extract and peanut butter together in a large bowl. You can use an electric hand mixer or stand mixer for this.
If you are using a stand mixer for this, use the paddle attachment on low speed or medium speed. Once combined, mix in the eggs.
In a separate medium bowl, sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir the dry ingredients into the peanut butter mixture until well mixed.
Cover the bowl and place the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Don’t skip this step! This helps it combine more firmly, making it perfect for rolling into balls.
Remove the bowl from the refrigerator and roll the dough into 1-inch balls, placing them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or wax paper. I find it’s helpful to use a small cookie scoop, like this one, to do this.
Using a fork, slightly flatten the top of each of the cookie dough balls. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies begin to turn golden brown.
Remove from the oven, and place the unwrapped Hersheys kisses in the center of each cookie, pressing down gently. After adding the chocolate kisses, place cookies to a wire rack to cool.
Repeat with the remaining cookie dough. You can store the peanut butter cookie dough in the refrigerator between batches, making it easy to split. Store the baked cookies in a single layer in an airtight container for up to 4 days.
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Peanut Butter Blossom Cookie Variations
Our family love these chewy peanut butter cookies, and has a blast changing up the recipe throughout the year. Want to customize your own? Give these variations a try!
Roll in granulated sugar: For an even sweeter cookie, roll the peanut butter balls in a little white sugar before baking.
Peanut butter cups: Instead of Hershey’s kisses, try Reese’s mini peanut butter cups into the centers of your cookies.
Chocolate chips: Add milk chocolate chips or white chocolate chips instead of a Hershey’s kiss.
Other flavors of Hershey’s Kisses: Did you know there are 14 different flavors of Hershey’s Kisses?? Give the Candy Cane Kisses a try during the holiday season (this is a popular Christmas cookie for our family!), the white chocolate/milk chocolate mixed Hugs Kisses or delicious Carmel Kisses a try for a different pop of flavor.
Use sprinkles: Roll or top the dough balls in sprinkles for a more festive, colorful cookie!
Make gluten-free cookies: This recipe also works well when you sub an all-purpose gluten-free flour blend instead of all-purpose flour. Just be sure if you are making gluten-free cookies that anything you choose to add (like the Reese’s cups) are also gluten-free.
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ tablespoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- Unwrapped Hershey's Kisses
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Cream the butter, sugars, vanilla extract and peanut butter together in a large bowl. Once combined, mix in the eggs.
- In a separate, medium bowl, sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir this dry mix into the peanut butter mixture until well mixed.
- Cover the bowl and place the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
- Remove the bowl from the refrigerator and roll the dough into 1 inch balls, placing on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Using a fork, slightly flatten the top of each ball.
- Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies begin to brown. Remove from the oven, and place an unwrapped Hershey's kiss in the center of each cookie, pressing down gently. After adding the chocolate kisses, transfer the cookies to a wire baking rack to cool.
The Best Peanut Butter Blossoms
I hope you love this easy peanut butter blossom cookies recipe. If you give them a try, be sure to tag me on social media! I would love to see.
How do you like to customize your peanut butter cookies??
