These neo-peanut butter blossom cookies are a riff on the classic Peanut Blossoms cookie which, as the story goes, became a runaway must-make recipe after the 1957 Pillsbury Bake-Off. If what you crave is a sweet that’s almost more confection than cookie and is more crumbly than gooey, this recipe is what you want.–Renee Schettler Rossi
Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- About 60 Guittard 38% Cacao Milk Chocolate Wafers or 30 Hershey’s Kisses
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (176°C). Adjust the oven racks to the lower and upper-middle positions. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the peanut butter and beat until combined, about a minute. Add the flour and mix, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed, until just combined.
- Divide the dough into about thirty 1-inch balls and place them about 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake until the cookies are almost 2/3 cooked through yet still soft enough to yield to a gentle touch, about 10 minutes.
- Remove the baking sheets from the oven and gently push 2 stacked Guittard Wafers or 1 Hershey's Kiss into the center of each cookie, flattening it slightly. The cookies may crack in various places. Be sure to work quickly, otherwise the cookies will start to harden. Return the baking sheets to the oven and bake until the chocolate melts slightly, 2 to 4 minutes more. Let the cookies cool completely on the sheets. (The cookies are very fragile when hot. Actually, they're still a little fragile even when cool.) The cookies will keep in a covered container for up to 5 days.
Notes
Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies Variation
Although a little milk chocolate does the trick quite nicely here, there are alternate options to filling the cookies. Chunks of your favorite dark chocolate. A dollop of jam. Mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Go crazy. Reacquaint yourself with that inner kid who’s still in you. You know, the one who wasn’t afraid to try anything…except maybe the high diving board at the swimming pool.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe Testers’ Reviews
Wanna make some friends? Then whip up a batch of these little gems. I took some to work and my co-workers loved them, as did my family. I decided to use dark chocolate Hershey’s Kisses for half the recipe and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures for the other half. They were both hits.
The dough is easy to whip up in a stand mixer and the baking time was perfect. Do be sure and follow the instructions to let the cookies cool before removing from the baking sheet, as they are indeed fragile. My daughter is usually our cookie baker but even I—the non-cookie baker—got wonderful results with this recipe.
I can’t wait to make these again and see what else I can come up with to put in the center of each cookie.
Don’t let the short ingredients list fool you. These are really good peanut butter blossom cookies! They’re very tender—almost creamy.
I used Jiff natural peanut butter and Hershey’s Kisses. The disher I used to portion out the cookies was a bit larger than 1 inch, so I only got 22 cookies instead of 30. I left the cookies in the oven for 11 minutes before I pushed in the Kisses and 4 minutes afterwards. I also switched and rotated the baking sheets halfway through the baking time, and then again after I pushed in the Kisses. They didn’t last more than 2 days. Everybody loved them. One note: A smaller cookie would be better, in my opinion. I’d rather have a 2-bite cookie than a 3-bite one.
I was very happy with this recipe. The cookies were super easy to make, called for just a few ingredients, and only took me about an hour to make from start to finish. And cleanup was a breeze because everything was made in one bowl and I lined the baking sheets with parchment paper.
I took the cookies out after 10 minutes and added the candy, gently pressing. I chose to use Rolo candies, KitKat minis, and some banana chips. I put them back in the oven for 2 minutes. They turned out perfect. The cookies have a nice soft texture, a very nice peanut butter flavor, and they melt in your mouth. The Rolo’s and the KitKat’s were a hit.
The banana chips were not. I love peanut butter and banana so I thought I would try the chips. I could not find the Guittard Milk Chocolate Wafers in my area. I would think they would be really good on the cookies, and would order some online to have on hand for the future. Very good recipe! The only thing I can mention is that when beating the butter, sugar, and peanut butter is that you need to scrape the bowl a few times because of the small amount of dough.
These peanut butter blossom cookies were fast and easy to put together. I had a difficult time judging when they were 2/3 of the way done, and so I went by the 10-minute time recommendation. I did rotate the cookie sheets halfway through baking. I think I would bake them a little longer—11 to 12 minutes—before adding the chocolate next time. The finished cookies have a light, crumbly texture, not your typical crunchy peanut butter cookie, but yummy. I used chunks of semisweet chocolate.
These cookies are great. They’re like thumbprint cookies but with chocolate. They’re actually like Hershey’s Kiss cookies (oh, wait, the recipe said that you could use Kisses) but instead call for high-quality chocolate. These were easy to make and everyone liked them. I used 70% dark chocolate pistoles from France.
My yield was 23 cookies, and so I used 46 pistoles). When pushing the pistoles in, I put the flat sides of the pistoles together so one rounded end was pointing upwards. I’m not sure whether this made a difference. Also, I left them in for 3 to 4 additional minutes after adding the pistoles, rather than just 2, because they did not seem golden enough.
I read the recipe with doubts in my mind—no egg, no baking soda, no brown sugar, no salt, no vanilla? These are not the cookies that I traditionally think of when I consider peanut butter cookies with the chocolate kiss in the middle—at least not the ones that I’m used to baking. But in their defense, these came together in minutes and were ready to go with a cold glass of milk as soon as they cooled.
These resemble more of a confection than a cookie. I prefer a snap when I bite into a cookie, and that is not the texture these had. They were sort of crumbly, even when cooled. I chose to fill the center with a miniature peanut butter cup. The cookies are tiny and I felt like the size of the peanut butter cup overwhelmed the cookie. Perhaps milk chocolate is the way to go.
Clean-up sure would have been easier if I had used parchment paper to line the baking sheets. I also find that when measuring peanut butter it is easiest when the measuring cup is sprayed with cooking spray-that way the peanut butter is easily removed from the measuring cup. The cookies were raw at the end of the cooking time so I added about 4 minutes. Please note that these cookies remain fragile even after they are fully cooled.
I used King Arthur gluten-free flour and it worked well; the same measurement as regular flour and the same cooking time. Dark chocolate kisses on top. A beautiful, tasty, and popular cookie.
Thanks, Reiko. Those look fantastic and we’re so pleased to hear that they work well with GF flour.
Ohhhh, Joyva Raspberry Jells in the middle! Yum!
Judi, sounds interesting. Would you put them in whole or cut them up?
I must be honest, when I saw the “headline,” I thought “Meh, who wants to eat peanut butter cookies? BUT then I read what you wrote and read the ingredients list, and I am going to make these first thing in February. (I’m not eating sweets–except for fresh fruit–in January.) Just five “real” ingredients, and they sound delicious.
By the way, did you happen to see the article in the NY Times about Comeback Sauce? I never heard of it before.
victoria2nycc, please do make them and let me know what you think. BTW, I admire your fortitude about not eating sweets in January. Brava. And, yep, Comeback Sauce is new to me, too. (I’m beginning to think I grew up a sheltered Northerner!)
Only because December and January were no holds barred months. I mean, really, American Hackleback Caviar with Crème Fraîche on potato chips just because Melissa Clark thought it was a good idea!!!! (By the way, it was.)
Hey, I do whatever Melissa Clark says, too….
Maybe not so sheltered, David. I lived in the upper South until I was in my 30s, and have never heard of Comeback Sauce either.
I have ceased to be surprised at the things articles claim are “quintessentially Southern” that I’ve never seen made in a Southern kitchen. It’s a large area with a lot of regional variations, and what might be on every table in Arkansas or Mississippi could be as foreign as fufu or puffer fish in Virginia or Tennessee. Doesn’t mean I won’t try it, though; it sounds like it would be delicious as a dressing for a cold shrimp salad on a hot summer day.
Hey, my book club thanks you for the cookie recipe. They were quick, simple, tasty….and even smoothed over the dread of dealing with Melville.
Renee R., I think you’re right. Regional variations can’t be considered Southern staples. And that applies anywhere, any region. I know the whole lobster culture in Maine isn’t as pronounced where I grew up in Massachusetts. We were all clams, clams, clams done a thousand different ways–yet both are part of the Northeastern food culture.
Oh, and if the cookies were able to make the Melville journey that much smoother, then I have done my job!