Holiday Baking – Very Easy-to-Make Peanut Butter Blossoms Cookies

Want a cookie recipe that is EASY to make & that virtually any one can make for the holidays? (or any other time for that matter!)

These work quite well for many a cookie exchange, too.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

The recipe can be made with some rolled oats replacing some of the all-purpose (AP) flour, and another flour can be considered to replace the AP flour as well.

We do a version of these in our family without adding extra fat besides what is already in the peanut butter, so the cookies with the rolled oats in them come out chewier that way. As a result, the photo shown below won’t look like the sugar coated versions of peanut butter blossoms that you see posted at the various peanut butter manufacturer or candy company websites. We just wanted to be sure to give you a heads up about why the photo will look different.

The version our family does has no additional fat besides the fat in the peanut butter (which is plenty, actually) and some of the flour has been replaced with Rolled Oats aka Old Fashioned Oats.

My husband suggested using an “alpine skier slope” analogy to describe how easy or hard a recipe might be, so this qualifies for a “beginner slope” analogy as in just above a “bunny slope” per se. (The stovetop peanut butter chews children typically make in middle school in Family & Consumer Science class would be at the easiest “bunny slope” level).

Although all nut prices are up this year, including peanut prices and thus peanut butter prices, still this is a cookie that many children as well as adults can enjoy as long as there are no allergy or sensitivity issues, of course.

Many variations of a recipe for these exist and if you enter the name “Peanut Butter Blossoms” into a search engine box you’ll find a variety of recipe options will come up for you to choose from.

A recipe calling for 1.5 – 1.75 cups of flour will probably make about 4 dozen or 48 cookies. Our recipe makes a smaller batch of 25-30 cookies.

We substitute Rolled Oats for some of the flour, use no butter nor any butter flavored shortening, and make a totally different recipe.

All the equipment besides your oven that you’ll need is:

• one medium mixing bowl
• a silicone spatula and a large mixing spoon
• measuring cups and measuring spoons
• a couple of cookie sheets
• some parchment baking paper (preferably double-sided silicone coated)
• size #40 cookie scoop
• two oven mitts (hot mitts)
• trivets or hot pads to put the hot cookie sheets down on (we like silicone mats for this)
• wire cookie cooling racks
• airtight storage container
• offset wide cookie spatula/turner

Here’s our recipe:

Preheat oven and bake at 350°F

Makes approx 25-30 cookies (you also need that many Chocolate Kisses, unwrapped)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup hydrogenated creamy peanut butter *
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 3 Tbsp. All-purpose Flour (preferably Unbleached)
• 1/4 cup Rolled Oats
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 Tbsp Tap Water

*this recipe will not work as well if you use a more liquid oil peanut butter as then the peanut oil is more likely to leak out of suspension; look for an ingredient label that reads something like: roasted peanuts; sugar; hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed, soybean and rapeseed); salt.

Although from a nutritional profile standpoint a more liquid oil type peanut butter is preferable, for cookie making it simply will not work quite as well.  We developed this recipe to skip using any butter fat or butter flavored shortening, so that was our compromise to remove some saturated or hydrogenated fat.

Method:

1. Into medium size mixing bowl add sugar, peanut butter, and egg; mix. Then add vanilla, oats, flour, and finally stir in water up to 3 Tbsp so that mixture is easier to portion.
2. Mix thoroughly.
3. Line each cookie sheet with double-sided silicone-coated parchment baking paper.
4. Scoop a ball of approx  1- 1.5 Tbsp of cookie dough (#60 or #40 cookie scoop or use your preferred technique using tableware spoons to shape a ball around 1″ in diameter) and place on parchment covered baking sheets.
5. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown on top.
6. Remove entire sheet of parchment baking paper from cookie sheet onto wire cookie cooling rack. Place a single Chocolate Kiss in the center of each cookie while the cookies are still hot.
7. Once cookies have cooled off, using a cookie spatula, remove cookies from parchment paper and place cookies on another wire cookie cooling rack and allow to completely cool before storing in a SINGLE layer as the chocolate kiss in the center will remain soft at room temperature.  [We actually store ours single layer (before later transferring these to holiday tins for gifting as part of a cookie assortment) in a large round pizza pan lined with plastic wrap and then put a clear plastic bag over the top and close it up.  Whenever anyone opens the bag, the air becomes perfumed with the aroma of peanuts!  If you like peanuts, you’ll be in for a treat!]

Other Variations

Cookie recipes you will find on the www most likely will be variations of a drop type sugar cookie and thus suggest using creamy smooth peanut butter (although for a different texture you could use other peanut butter options), some butter or butter flavored shortening, white sugar or brown sugar or a mixture of those sugars as you prefer, some egg, vanilla extract, some flour, some baking soda plus some salt, possibly some baking powder (depends on the recipe), a little liquid such as milk, and for the tops of the cookies, milk chocolate “kisses” look nice.

A video showing the basic method for a drop sugar cookie provides a nice demonstration. I personally prefer recipes without the extra butter in them that the recipe used in the video features.

I do think that using a clean wire whisk or large fork to mix together the flour and leavening agents is always a good idea. Actually, if you stir together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl using a wire whisk or large fork, you will probably get a better dispersement of the leavening agents, etc., into the flour than if you sifted the mixture together as some testing to that end has indicated.

Note: we don’t roll the completed raw cookie dough balls in granulated sugar either–whether or not you do that is totally up to you, but we do NOT suggest it.

The version of the cookies we like to make are yummy just as is!