Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies
These peanut butter kiss cookies will disappear from the cooling rack faster than Santa can make it down the chimney. With only four ingredients (and no flour), you've never tasted a peanut butter cookie that is so rich.
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies
- ⏱ Prep Time: 10 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 12 minutes
- 🍪 Flavor Profile: The richest, most peanut butter-y cookie you've ever had, topped off with a little chocolate hat.
- 🎄 Good For: The best Christmas cookie plates, enjoying while decorating the tree, sharing with neighbors to spread the holiday cheer.
- 🧡 Difficulty: The hardest part will be not eating them all before they make them to your cookie jar!
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Hiya friend: What's better than a delicious holiday cookie? One that only needs four ingredients and is super easy to make! Try them today and see if you can save enough to take to your annual Christmas cookie exchange.
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- A+ flavor combo: These peanut butter blossoms have the magical combination of peanut butter and chocolate, which makes them the perfect cookie to bring to your next holiday get-together. If you want more of a candy than a cookie, try my buckeye balls!
- No flour in sight: Unlike most recipes you'll find for peanut butter blossoms, these cookies have no flour in them. That makes them richer, and really allows the peanut butter flavor to shine.
- The best cookie plates around: A cookie tin made up of these peanut butter kiss cookies + Christmas cutout cookies + chocolate candy cane gooey butter cookies + thumbprint cookies with jam = the best holiday cookie spread around!
🎄 The Ingredients You Need
- Peanut butter: Don't worry, you won't miss the flour! In its place, this recipe uses a mixture of peanut butter and sugar to create the richest peanut butter cookies you've ever tasted! It's best to use a creamy processed peanut butter in these cookies. Natural peanut butter won't give you quite the same texture.
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Different Kisses: Feel like mixing it up a bit? Try swapping out your milk chocolate Hershey kisses for caramel kisses, white chocolate kisses, or Hershey hugs!
- Different candy: If you're feeling extra creative, you could try using chocolate chips, milk chocolate candy, or even mini peanut butter cups. I even know someone who uses squares of regular chocolate!
🥣 Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies How-To
Step 1: Stir the peanut butter with the eggs and sugar. You'll need a little arm strength to get it all mixed properly (or a hand mixer), but it will totally be worth it! The dough should be tacky, but not so sticky that you can't easily roll it into a ball. If it feels too sticky, add a little more sugar and try shaping a cookie ball again.
Step 2: Using wet hands, roll out a tablespoon of dough into a smooth ball and drop it on a (greased!) baking sheet. Leave about 1½" space between the cookies.
Bake for 12-14 minutes. The tops should just be beginning to crack and the bottoms should be very lightly browned. While they bake, unwrap your chocolate kisses!
Step 3: Straight out of the oven, press an unwrapped chocolate kiss gently into the top of each cookie. It should be deep enough to create an indent in the cookie and stick, but not so deep that the cookie breaks apart.
Step 4: Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes or so, then carefully move them to a wire rack to cool completely.
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🙋🏻♀️ Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies FAQs
No need! In my house, peanut butter blossom cookies barely last long enough to reach the cooling rack! If you're making up a large batch to serve to guests and family, you can keep them on the counter in an airtight container for up to 10 days (but the texture will be best in the first 3).
Since this recipe doesn't contain flour, you shouldn't run into an issue with crumbly cookies. That being said, if your cookies crumbled, it's most likely because you pushed the Hershey kiss too far into the cookie. Since you need to add the kiss right after they finish baking, the cookies are still soft and fragile. As long as you're gentle, your peanut butter blossoms should stay together.
Dense peanut butter blossoms are still rich and sweet, so if this happens to you, I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding someone to gobble up the whole batch! In order to lighten up your cookies so they're less dense next time, use more sugar. Adding a ¼ to a ½ cup of additional sugar will make the cookie dough easier to work with. It also creates lighter, softer peanut butter blossom cookies that are just as decadent.
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Skip the natural stuff: While I love a natural peanut butter, these cookies are not the place for it. Creamy processed peanut butter like Jif will give you better cookies.
- Work it: The dough will be sticky and tacky, but it should be workable. If you're having trouble working with the dough, add a bit more sugar.
- Unwrap it: Don't forget to unwrap your chocolate kisses while the cookies are baking. You want to push the chocolate into the peanut butter cookies as soon as they are out of the oven, and that's a lot easier to do if you aren't fumbling with foil!
- Freeze it: Peanut butter kiss cookies last in the freezer for 4-6 months. To thaw your cookies, remove the entire container and allow it to come up to room temperature with the lid on. This prevents your peanut butter kiss cookies from drying out.
🍪 More Great Christmas Cookie Recipes:
If you tried these peanut butter kiss cookies or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Ingredients
- 14 ounces creamy peanut butter
- 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 36 milk chocolate Hershey's Kisses
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, combine 14 ounces creamy peanut butter, 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar, and 2 eggs until well combined. The dough should be tacky but easy to shape into balls.
- Using a small cookie scoop, roll about a tablespoon of dough at a time and place them on a greased or lined baking sheet 1 ½" apart.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 12-14 minutes, until the tops start to crack.
- Remove from the oven and immediately place an unwrapped chocolate kiss in the center of each cookie, pressing lightly. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes, then move to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
- If the dough is too sticky to easily form into balls, add ¼-½ cup additional sugar, until the dough is more easily workable.
- Make sure to have all your chocolate kisses unwrapped before the cookies come out of the oven. We like to unwrap them while the cookies bake so we're ready when they come out!
- These cookies keep well in an airtight container for up to 10 days (but the texture is best in the first 3 days). Be really careful when transferring them, it's very easy to misshape the chocolate kisses once they've melted on the cookie!
My family has been making this recipe every holiday season since 1985, and they are always one of the first to disappear!
I still remember the first time I had a peanut butter blossom cookie—one of the girls on my dorm floor my freshman year of college brought a tin of them back to share after Thanksgiving break. I was hooked! I've been making them ever since, and they never disappoint.