I should just go jump onto the elliptical machine now. It's never too early to start making Christmas cookies... right? Well, it is too early when it's two weeks before Christmas and you are the only person in the house who eats the cookies in question. Nevertheless, my mind was playing non-stop peanut blossoms, and I could not help but start baking. I can not wait until my little bugs are old enough to start baking with me!
All of my cookbooks and recipes were lost during one of the eight moves we've done in the last few years. A google search brought me to allrecipes.com, where I chose the following recipe for Peanut Blossoms:
Ingredients
* 1 cup shortening
* 1 cup peanut butter
* 1 cup packed brown sugar
* 1 cup white sugar
* 2 eggs
* 1/4 cup milk
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup white sugar for decoration
* 2 (9 ounce) bags milk chocolate candy kisses, unwrapped
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening, peanut butter, brown sugar, and 1 cup white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, and stir in the milk and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture until well blended. Shape tablespoonfuls of dough into balls, and roll in remaining white sugar. Place cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to12 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from oven, and immediately press a chocolate kiss into each cookie. Allow to cool completely; the kiss will harden as it cools.
The cookies are delicious. In fact, my peanut-butter-loathing husband came home from work and thought they looked so delicious that he took a giant bite out of one. What followed was a reaction so over the top that you would have thought I just tried to poison him by putting arsenic in his cookie. Nonetheless, I felt guilty and stayed up late to make him a batch of peanut-free chocolate chip cookies. 'Tis the season ;)
