Hello, all! Now that’s it’s almost the end of October, I guess we have to accept that summer is definitely over. Time for sweaters, scarves, and much more baking now that I’m inside more often! This weekend my husband and I went to our monthly Poker Night with a bunch of friends and I decided to bring an old favorite: Peanut Butter Blossoms. I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t like these. They’re soft but chewy peanut butter cookies with a Hershey kiss nestled right into the middle, and they’re seriously the best. Here’s the recipe!

Ingredients:

• 1 and 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup sugar (plus a few tablespoons extra for rolling)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• Hershey kisses (my most recent batch made 40 cookies, so you’ll need somewhere around that many kisses)

Preheat the oven to 375º. Cream the shortening, peanut butter, and the two sugars together until they’re fully mixed.

Add the egg, vanilla, and milk; mix to fully combine.

Add the flour, baking soda, and salt, and mix well until all the ingredients are fully incorporated. It’s a fairly stiff dough so make sure to really get everything mixed in!

Shape the cookies into about 1″ balls, and roll them in extra sugar. Hint: it goes quicker if you shape all the cookies into balls first and then roll them all in sugar at once.

Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2″ apart. (Shoutout to my hubby and my mom for getting me the largest cookie sheets on the market so that I don’t have to cool cookie sheets between batches anymore. You’re the best!)

IMPORTANT NEXT STEP: COUNT OUT HOW MANY COOKIE BALLS YOU HAVE ROLLED. During the first baking time, you’ll want to unwrap enough Hershey kisses to place one on each cookie and it’s a super drag trying to rush through unwrapping them if you didn’t count.

Bake for ~8 minutes. Unwrap as many Hershey kisses as needed. Remove the cookies from the oven. While the cookies are still piping hot, place a kiss in the center of the cookie and press down gently.

Put the kiss-topped cookies back in the oven for 2-3 minutes. Then, remove them from the oven and let them cool slightly on the baking sheet. They’re really fragile when hot, so it’s hard to transfer them to a cooling rack unless they’re slightly cooled.

Once the cookies are move-able, transfer them to a cooling rack to finish cooling, and enjoy! Make sure you get some for yourself, because these go quick (or at least they do in my house!). Happy baking!