Peanut Butter Kisses

I have always loved the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey’s kiss in the middle, and was happy that I received a recipe for them when I got married. When my mother-in-law asked me to bring cookies to Thanksgiving weekend’s USC/UCLA football game, these cookies were the first thing I thought of. I went to the recipe box and looked them up, and was a bit dismayed at what I found…12 or so ingredients, some I don’t have at home, and I was a bit overwhelmed.

I decided to look for a short cut, and turned to allrecipes.com. There I found this amazingly simple recipe that is the best I’ve had to this day.

Just a few ingredients make this recipe fast and easy:

• 1 Cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 Cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 18-20 chocolate candies (kisses, peanut butter cups, etc.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the first three ingredients, form into 1″ balls and bake for 8-10 minutes (mine came out perfect at 9 min). While they are baking, unwrap 18-20 Hershey kisses. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, press a kiss in the center of each cookie. Let cool…then eat.

Modification

Now, as a busy mom, I don’t always have what I think I do on hand in the house. Once my cookies were already in the oven, I realized that I didn’t have any kisses - which is a pretty important part of the recipe. I did a quick survey of the pantry and substituted Dove chocolates and mini Reeses cups, which worked wonderful. I think I may use the Reeses exclusively moving forward.

End Result

Given how difficult I found the original recipe, this was an incredibly fast and delicious cookie that was devoured at the football game. I ended up doubling the recipe, which netted exactly 40 cookies. After just 24 hours, there are 3 left. Given the amount of wheat allergies and gluten issues these days, this would be a perfect recipe to pass along.