Peanut Butter Blossoms Recipe (2024)

Recipe from the Gerrero family

Adapted by The New York Times

Updated Dec. 7, 2023

Peanut Butter Blossoms Recipe (1)

Total Time
35 minutes
Rating
5(6,732)
Notes
Read community notes

For as long as anyone can remember, wedding receptions in Pittsburgh have featured cookie tables, laden with dozens of homemade old-fashioned offerings like lady locks, pizzelles and buckeyes. For weeks ahead, sometimes months, mothers and aunts and grandmas and in-laws hunker down in the kitchen baking and freezing. These peanut butter and chocolate cookies were part of the spread at Laura Gerrero and Luke Wiehagen's wedding in 2009. Though peanut blossoms were popularized by Freda Smith in a 1957 Pillsbury Bake-Off competition, this version of the now-classic cookie came from the bride's family. —The New York Times

Featured in: The Wedding? I’m Here for the Cookies

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Ingredients

Yield:5 dozen cookies

  • cups all-purpose flour
  • 1teaspoon baking soda
  • ½teaspoon salt
  • 4ounces (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
  • ½cup smooth peanut butter (or other creamy nut butter)
  • ½cup granulated sugar, plus more for rolling
  • ½cup light brown sugar
  • 1large egg
  • 1tablespoon milk, half-and-half, oat milk or nut milk
  • 1teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Nonstick spray or vegetable oil for cookie sheet (optional)
  • 5dozen (one 11-ounce package) Hershey’s Kisses, foil removed

Ingredient Substitution Guide

Nutritional analysis per serving (60 servings)

100 calories; 6 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 13 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 9 grams sugars; 1 gram protein; 44 milligrams sodium

Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

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Peanut Butter Blossoms Recipe (2)

Preparation

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  1. Step

    1

    Sift together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. Using an electric mixer, cream together butter, peanut butter, ½ cup granulated sugar and light brown sugar. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat until well blended. Gradually add flour mixture, mixing thoroughly. If the dough is very soft, refrigerate for about 1 hour.

  2. Step

    2

    Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray, oil or line a cookie sheet with nonstick liner and set aside. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. (For a precise number of cookies, divide the dough into 5 pieces, and shape each piece into 12 balls.)

    Peanut Butter Blossoms Recipe (3)
  3. Step

    3

    Roll cookies in sugar and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake until very light brown and puffed, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove sheet from oven and lightly press a candy kiss into center of each cookie, allowing it to crack slightly. Return to oven until light golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from oven, cool completely and store in an airtight container.

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6,732

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Private Notes

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Cooking Notes

Kay

My grandmother, Freda Smith from Gibsonburg Ohio, created these cookies and was the Bake-Off prize winner. It is true she did not win the Grand Prize but her legacy lives on through these cookies. She would love that they became so beloved by so many. My mother and I made a TV commercial for Pillsbury flour in 1965 because Freda had passed away. What a gift she gave us. Enjoy her Peanut Blossoms and know a wonderful woman from Ohio created them for her Grandkids.

Alyssa Kleiman

The recipe is wrong because it says it makes 5 dozen when it really makes 22 cookies

Esme

Longtime family tradition to use semisweet chocolate chips instead of Kisses. A less sweet chocolate makes them less cloying, there's a better chocolate-to-bite distribution, and the chips soften and then don't entirely harden after cooling. It's what's up.

SugarFree

For easy storage - and, I'd argue, easier eating - push the chocolate kiss in upside down! The point will melt a bit as you push it in, there will be a chocolate bite right in the middle of the cookie, and a perfectly lovely chocolate dot on top. Another tip: if I run out of kisses before I run out of dough, I bake as usual, use my mini mortar pestle to indent the middle after 9 minutes, then fill the indentation with a spoon of homemade salted caramel. Always a jar in the fridge. Yummy!

Kelly

These turned out great and I did get 5 dozen. I used a food scale to divide the dough into 5 equal weight balls, them divided each ball in half, those sections in half, and formed 3 cookies out of each section. Cooked 7 minutes, added the kiss, then 2 to 3 more minutes just as described. Perfect!

JB in NJ

I have for years sworn by ATK's peanut butter cookie recipe--forget smooth, go chunky and up the peanut factor by adding crushed dry roasted peanuts--if you love peanuts, you can't beat it!

ssstrom

I rolled theses in turbinado sugar before baking, which gave them a lovely golden color and more sophisticated look.

Jamie Lynn

If you only got 22 cookies, they must be HUGE! I get about 60 out of a single batch.

Laura

These cookies are especially tasty with dark chocolate kisses and all natural (unsweetened) peanut butter.

Mary B.

This recipe was an entrant in the 9th Pillsbury Bakeoff in 1957. Although it did not win the $45,000 prize, it certainly has become a classic American cookie. It has been Enjoyed by many for many decades!

L-siz

Another way to make these amazing is to replace the Hershey's kiss with a miniature Reeses peanut butter cup. Follow the exact same recipe just put a cup in instead of a kiss. Next level. No need to use a mini muffin tin as I've seen in other Reeses peanut butter cup recipes.

vivianruth

I have a different recipe for the same kind of cookie. It uses a larger ratio of peanut butter to other ingredients (e.g. ¾ cup peanut butter, but same amount of butter, egg). Thus the other recipe (from about.com) has a stronger peanut flavor, which I prefer.

Laurie

Do you out the chips in the dough or mound on top after baking? The kisses mainly annoy me because it's hard to store the.

CC

I've never made these before but of the 4 different cookies I made for my office cookie swap, these were the ones that were gone the fastest. I did use chunky instead of smooth, because I like chunky better. They were amazing.

Jo

Do you use fresh ground peanut butter, or something processed, like Jif?

Jennie

For anyone who, um, forgot to add the peanut butter to PEANUT BUTTER blossoms, I just learned that you can pull the dough sans peanut butter out of the fridge, break it up into clumps, put into the (recently washed) bowl of your mixer, add the forgotten peanut butter, and beat until it's well incorporated. The rub is that you have to remember that you forgot the peanut butter. ;) Made 4 doz. Baked at 350 for 8 mins plus 1 min more when topped with the kiss. Very presentable pb blossom!

soph

these are perfect!! normally i’m not a huge peanut butter fan but these were amazing

kmg

Making the 5 dozen cookies results in a nice bite size cookie with a good cookie to chocolate ratio. Yummy

lara

These cookies are my new favorite recipe! Super easy and forgiving, and the perfect peanut butter cookie texture.

ley

Made as written except used Demerara sugar and a dark chocolate wafer on top. Tried one at cooking time indicated (for only slightly larger than indicated size) and it tasted like flour and baking soda so cooked a bit longer. Still tasted, as my husband said, “farinaceous.” And the Demerara sugar was unpleasantly crunchy. I used a natural PB and wonder if this was part of the problem, but this was not what I was hoping for!

Denis

Last year I used the ATK peanut butter cookie recipe and just added the kisses to make them into blossoms. This recipe resulted in a cookie of a better texture, for blossoms, so I'll use the ATK recipe only for "regular" PB cookies in the future, and this one for blossoms. I think rolling in sugar makes the cookies too sweet, plus skipping saves a step. And using dark chocolate kisses is an absolute necessity IMHO. I doubled the recipe with great results. Fantastic cookies. Will make every year.

julia

perfect cookies, no notes.

Marian

Based on another person’s comment, I tried rolling the cookies in both turbinado and regular sugar. After ample comparison testing, I think the turbinado wins out. It adds an extra crunch that is very satisfying, and the cookies do turn a lovely toasty brown.

Ruthie

Double the peanut butter for more intense flavor. Otherwise perfect! Helpful to use a scale to divide dough into 60 and keep balls same size

Kathy

I used unpasteurized peanut butter (Trader Joe's - not sure if it is unpasteurized exactly but the oils pool). The dough needed more moisture and I should have added another bit of milk. Outcome was great though - delicious. I could have gotten more cookies if the dough had held together better.

CS in CO

I’ve made this recipe for over 7 years for my family’s Christmas cookie exchange. These cookies are delicious, easy and are always a hit!

kiss cookie obsessed

I have a simpler recipe that I swear is perfection — one egg, one cup peanut butter, one teaspoon of vanilla. That’s it! Mix and cook at 325 for 8 minutes. I make my own dairy-free kisses using molds too, but only because I’m lactose intolerant.

sharie

Delicious, but got about 45 cookies, not 60.

Rue

I made these for the first time and love the recipe. Perfect blend of PB and chocolate

JLW

Plus 2 Tblsp milk

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Peanut Butter Blossoms Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why are my peanut butter blossoms dry? ›

If your peanut butter blossoms are dry, it's because you have too much flour or too little liquid (or a combo of both!).

What is Baskin Robbins peanut butter blossom? ›

Perfectly paired with classics like decadent Chocolate Fudge and timeless Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter Blossom features sweet and salty peanut butter ice cream, chocolate chips, peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough pieces, and rich fudge swirls.

Why do you put Criss Cross on peanut butter cookies? ›

So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.

How many calories are in one peanut butter blossom? ›

There are 90 calories in 1 cookie of Hershey's Peanut Butter Blossoms. * The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

Why are my PB blossoms flat? ›

Mistake 1: Butter (or margarine or shortening) in the dough is too soft. This recipe calls for chilling the dough before shaping the cookie. If you don't do this step,the butter will be so soft that it will melt faster in the oven. When that happens, cookies will flatten before they've been able to set.

How long should you refrigerate peanut butter cookie dough before baking? ›

You'll want to fill it to heaping and then sweep the excess off the top with the flat edge of a butter knife. Be careful not to overmix here — you want the dough to stay light and fluffy, and overmixing can result in a tough cookie. Cover and refrigerate about 2 hours or until firm.

What is Baskin-Robbins most popular flavor? ›

Oreo cookies 'n cream is one of Baskin-Robbins' most popular flavors, which is no surprise considering how often the ice cream is featured in Baskin-Robbins' seasonal treats and desserts.

What did Baskin-Robbins used to be called? ›

It wasn until 1953 that the ice cream chain dropped the separate identities of Snowbird and Burton and became Baskin-Robbins. A local advertising agency, Carson/Roberts, advised a uniform identity and image under the name Baskin-Robbins 31 Ice Cream.

What is so special about Baskin-Robbins? ›

Baskin-Robbins® is the only ice cream chain in the world that has the unique “31 flavor” concept. It represents a different flavor for each day of the month. Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins, the founders of Baskin Robbins, were brothers-in-law.

Why do you press a fork in peanut butter cookies? ›

The reason is that peanut butter cookie dough is dense, and unpressed, each cookie will not cook evenly. Using a fork to press the dough is a convenience of tool; bakers can also use a cookie shovel (spatula).

Why do you turn peanut butter upside down? ›

Turn the unopened jar of separated peanut butter upside down, the idea being that as the oil then flows upwards it will slowly mix itself into the thick peanut butter.

Why do you put oil instead of butter in cookies? ›

What about substituting oil for butter? Depending on the type of oil, it can add complex flavor and welcome moisture to your baked goods. A good rule of thumb is to replace about 3/4 of the butter in a recipe with olive, canola, or vegetable oil. (If the recipe calls for 1 cup butter, use ¾ cup oil.)

How many calories are in a Hershey's Kiss? ›

Hershey Kiss (1 piece) contains 3g total carbs, 2.8g net carbs, 1.5g fat, 0.4g protein, and 27 calories.

What brand of peanut butter has the most calories? ›

1. Peter Pan Creamy Original Peanut Butter. It's an inescapable fact that peanut butter is a high-calorie food, due to the fact that peanuts are an energy-dense ingredient. But Peter Pan Creamy Original Peanut Butter supplies way more calories than you might expect.

How many peanuts in a tub of peanut butter? ›

The National Peanut Board estimates it takes about 540 peanuts to make a 12-ounce jar of peanut butter. That's approximately 45 peanuts per ounce of peanut butter.

How do you fix dry peanut butter cookies? ›

Add more liquid ingredients in small amounts. Milk, egg yolks or egg whites, vanilla extract or even a teaspoon of water can help moisten the dough to give you less crumbly cookies. A little bit of a liquid like milk can also help your cookies spread in the oven to give you a more crispy cookie.

Why are peanut butter cookies dry? ›

Why are my cookies dry and crumbly? This is most likely a classic case of using too much flour. It's crucial to properly measure the flour in this recipe, as even 1 extra tablespoon of flour can completely change the structure of the cookies. You also might have over baked them!

Why is my peanut butter dry? ›

Since oil and water don't mix, and peanut butter has a high oil content, there isn't much room in the mixture left over for water, explains Live Science. This can lead to naturally dry peanut butter, drying out more quickly due to its limited water content.

Why do my cookies come out dry? ›

Moisture is a key factor in baking. When we bake cookies, the heat of the oven turns the water content in the dough to steam, and it evaporates, which dries out the cookie dough. Too little water and it evaporates too soon, and this makes your cookie dough too dry.

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