Best-Ever Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies

Every year, the peanut butter blossom cookies I bake are a huge hit. No matter how many dozens I make, it's never enough. The peanut buttery cookies topped with a chocolate kiss simply vanish as if by magic, quicker than Santa pops down the chimney to deliver Christmas gifts. If I should dare to set a peanut butter blossom out on Santa's treat plate, a quick hand snatches it up before the kids are even nestled all snug in their beds. Poor Santa. Maybe one year he'll get lucky enough to try one.

If you'd like to whip up a batch for him at your house (or just enjoy them yourself) here's the simple yet scrumptious recipe. My recipe is a bit different from the rest I've seen as it has more peanut butter and vanilla but less salt. It gives the cookies a richer, more peanut buttery taste. Be sure to get extra chocolate kisses when you make these. I guarantee you some of those are going to "disappear" while you're baking if your house is anything like mine.

Other Cookie Recipes
Be sure to check out my recipes for these other great holiday cookie treats:
Big & Chewy Butterscotch and Chocolate Chip Cookies
Meltaway Spritz Butter Cookies
Snickerdoodle Specials 
Colonial Williamsburg Gingerbread Cookies
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies (Coming soon!)


Baking Tricks
These are the silicone baking mats I use for cookies and LOVE. They are also great for cooking chicken and other foods in the oven. The baking sheets hold up well, I've had my set for a few years now. I'd be lost without my KitchenAid mixer, attachments and a good set of wooden spoons, too!

Best-Ever Peanut Butter Blossoms

by The Stay-at-Home Life

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Keywords: bake dessert peanut butter chocolate Christmas cookie American fall spring summer winter

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Ingredients (4 dozen)

For cookies

• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda

For rolling

• 1/4 cup sugar

On top

• 48 unwrapped chocolate kisses

Instructions

Combine sugars, butter and peanut butter. Cream together until light and fluffy.

Add egg, vanilla and salt, beating until well mixed

Stir together flour and baking soda

Slowly add flour mixture to wet mixture, mixing continually

Dough will be crumbly

Shape dough into 1-inch balls

Roll through sugar

Place on cookie sheet about two inches apart

Bake at 375 for 8 to 10 minutes

When the dough is set and you have one minute left to bake, remove the cookies from the oven and press the chocolate kisses down into each

Bake for the remaining minute (this allows the kisses to melt into the cookies a bit and adhere better)

Remove from oven and put the cookies onto a cooling rack right away

Store in an air-tight container

Cookies keep for awhile so can be made ahead

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Colonial Williamsburg Gingerbread Cookies

If you've ever been to Colonial Williamsburg, you most likely remember the awesome gingerbread cookies that are sold in the little shop behind Raleigh Tavern. To me, they are all that gingerbread should be. The perfect blend of spices, aroma and texture in a cookie that screams "Christmas" yet is too good not to eat all year long. My recipe is inspired by these delightful cookies.

These cookies bring back great memories of Colonial Williamsburg for me. It's one of my absolute favorite places. The old houses, architecture, gardens, shops, costumes and decorations are amazing to see. I love stepping back in time to see what our country was once like. You can't help but feel like you're stepping back in time when you're there! The various taverns have some good food and drinks, too. The gingerbread cookies are one of my first stops on visits. I'm always sure to get extras to bring home. I don't make it there very often though, so with this recipe I make my own at home!

On a random message board, I recently found a comment posted years ago with a recipe the author claimed to be the original one the Williamsburg bakers use. My recipe is very similar, but with changes, as to me the one on the message board didn't have the flavor profile I remember. They were more bland and floury.

Unlike many gingerbreads, these are so easy to make. Unless you burn them, there's really no way to mess them up either. How long you bake them just determines how soft or crunchy they are. Either way, they're good! And that's coming from me, Mrs. Doesn't-Usually-Like-Crunchy-Cookies. I can't stop eating these, though. M2 adores them, too. She eats cookie after cookie until I hide them away.

The dough doesn't have to be chilled at all. Simply whip up a batch of dough, roll them out and start cutting. The dough is soft and stretchy without being sticky. I don't have to add any flour to the rolling surface or rolling pin when I get to that part. Since there aren't any eggs in the dough, it's a good dough to eat raw, too. M2 kept sneaking bits of it while I was rolling it out! It's really a pretty quick recipe to throw together. The cutouts take the most time.

The gingerbread cookies in Colonial Williamsburg are kept simple with no decoration and are all round. I had a bit more fun with mine, cutting them into various shapes. If you want, you can sprinkle on some powdered sugar or add icing. I kept mine traditional in that respect.

Since they are a cut out cookie, it's possible to make mini cookies from this gingerbread. The mini ones are fun for the kids to eat and cut down on how much you're eating (as long as you don't eat a ton to compensate for the size). The cookies don't spread much while baking, they go up more than anything, so as long as you leave a little space between each you can load up the cookies sheets to get them baked faster. I use silicone baking mats (there's a link to them below) to keep the bottoms from getting dark or too crispy.

Just like in Colonial Williamsburg where you can get their gingerbread cookies year round, these cookies are tasty at any time. Around Christmas they're just extra special. Grab a few, put them on a festive holiday plate, heat up a cup of hot chocolate or pour a cold cup of eggnog and slip into the Christmas spirit with these Colonial Williamsburg gingerbread cookies.

Other Cookie Recipes
Be sure to check out my recipes for these other great holiday cookie treats:
Big & Chewy Butterscotch and Chocolate Chip Cookies
Meltaway Spritz Butter Cookies
Snickerdoodle Specials 
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies (Coming soon!)
Best-Ever Peanut Butter Blossoms

Baking Tricks
These are the silicone baking mats I use for cookies and LOVE. They are also great for cooking chicken and other foods in the oven. The baking sheets hold up well, I've had my set for a few years now. I'd be lost without my KitchenAid mixer, attachments and a good set of wooden spoons, too!

Colonial Williamsburg Gingerbread Cookies

by The Stay-at-Home Life

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Cook Time: 9-11 minutes

Keywords: bake dessert low-sodium nut-free cinnamon nutmeg ginger Christmas Thanksgiving cookie American fall spring summer winter

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Ingredients (Yield depends on size of cutters)

• 1 cup unsulphered molasses
• 1/2 cup evaporated milk
• 1 cup melted unsalted butter
• 4 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 6 cups flour

Instructions

In a mixing bowl, mix molasses, evaporated milk, butter, salt and sugar until well combined

Add ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and baking soda to the mixture

Slowly add the flour one cup at a time, mixing constantly

Mix until well combined, plus a few more minutes to achieve a smooth texture

With rolling pin, roll dough to 1/4 inch sheet and cut with cookie cutters of any shape and size

Place on cookie sheet, they can be close together as long as there's a bit of space in between

Bake at 375 for 9 minutes for softer cookies, bake longer, up to 11 minutes, for crunchier cookies

Since there is no egg, you can make the cookies as soft as you'd like. Under 9 minutes will give you a more cake-like cookie

Optional: Dust cookies with confectioner's sugar

Cool for two minutes then remove from cookie sheet onto cooling rack

Cookies can be stacked on each other to cool

Once cool, pack in an air-tight container or baggies

The cookies keep for a long time so they are great to make in advance

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Soft and Chewy Snickerdoodle Specials

Snickerdoodles are one of my absolute favorite kinds of cookies. The ones that are soft and chewy are the absolute best. I'm not one for crunchy, hard cookies, especially when it comes to my snickerdoodles! These tasty treats are good to eat at any time of the year.

I'm an absolute sucker for almost anything cinnamon. I've made these classic cookies so many times over the years and finally have the perfect recipe for them. I add a special, secret ingredient to my recipe. It makes them even tastier and more wonderful.

The secret ingredient? Nutmeg. Another spice I adore. Just a bit adds a whole other depth of flavor to the cookies. It ups the deliciousness factor, which I'd never thought was even possible with the already-awesome snickerdoodle! Like all my recipes, they are simple to make as well. When you have kids, there simply isn't time to spend too long baking or cooking anything.

I whipped up a big batch of these to give to family, friends, neighbors, A's coworkers, and M2's aide and therapists. Everyone who has tried them so far has deemed them to be "cookie crack" and gobbled them up. These aren't cookies that are going to sit around uneaten!

Once these are baked, package them up in an air-tight container and they'll stay fresh for weeks. Perfect for making ahead at the holidays!

Other Cookie Recipes
Be sure to check out my recipes for these other great holiday cookie treats:
Big & Chewy Butterscotch and Chocolate Chip Cookies
Meltaway Spritz Butter Cookies
Colonial Williamsburg Gingerbread Cookies
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies (Coming soon!)
Best-Ever Peanut Butter Blossoms

Baking Tricks
These are the silicone baking mats I use for cookies and LOVE. They are also great for cooking chicken and other foods in the oven. The baking sheets hold up well, I've had my set for a few years now. I'd be lost without my KitchenAid mixer, attachments and a good set of wooden spoons, too!

Soft and Chewy Snickerdoodle Specials

by The Stay-at-Home Life

Prep Time: 25 minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Keywords: bake dessert cinnamon nutmeg Christmas Hanukkah Thanksgiving cookie comfort food fall spring summer winter

6076133

Ingredients (4 dozen)

For dough

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• 3/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, room temperature

For Rolling Mixture

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• You can adjust the amount of cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

Instructions

Cream butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and nutmeg until light and fluffy

In another bowl, mix salt, cream of tartar, baking soda and flour

Add dry mixture to wet mixture slowly, mixing continually, until well blended

Chill dough in the fridge 30 minutes

Combine the rolling mixture of sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Form dough into 1.5" balls

Roll balls through rolling mixture

Place on cookie sheet 2 inches apart

Put remaining dough back in the fridge

Bake cookies for 9 minutes, just until set and ever so slightly starting to get golden around the edges

Remove from oven and let cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes

Remove cookies from cookie sheet and cool the rest of the way on cooling rack

Once cooled, put in baggies or an air-tight container. Cookies will stay soft and fresh for awhile so can easily be made ahead for the holidays

Please vote for me by clicking the pink banner below, then clicking the GREEN or ORANGE button on the next page to confirm the vote! Thank you!!

This post contains affiliate links.

Meltaway Spritz Butter Cookies

Baking cookies one of my most-loved holiday traditions. Every year, I spend hours pouring over recipes I've made before along with new ones deciding what I should make for the holiday season. This year, I'm making seven different kinds. The first ones I made are meltaway spritz butter cookies from a recipe I created myself.

These little gems are a twist on the classic spritz cookie. I looked at recipes for classic spritz cookies to used as my base, poured over meltaway and butter cookie recipes, then picked out what parts of each I liked best. The goal was to have the best parts of each come through in this cookie. Finally, working with a baker friend of mine, I figured out what elements would work well together so I wouldn't be left with something hard or mushy.

In the end, I had an amazingly tasty hybrid cookie that melts in your mouth, reminds you of the spritz your grandma used to make and brings to mind a delicate butter cookie -- all in the same delicious bite.There really is nothing like them that I've ever had before! Anyone else who has tried them said the cookies are amazing and that they were eaten way too quickly.

Other Cookie Recipes
Check out these other great cookie recipes:
Soft and chewy butterscotch & chocolate chip cookies
Soft and chewy snickerdoodle specials
Colonial Williamsburg Gingerbread Cookies
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies (Coming soon!)
Best-Ever Peanut Butter Blossoms

As an added plus, these meltaway spritz butter cookies are fairly simple to make. On my first run, I tried using a cookie press. I gave up, I just can't get a cookie press to work how it should. I considered making these drop cookies, but they really need to bake evenly and not for very long. The need for even baking ruled out balls as well. Sprinkles also didn't seem to stick well once they baked, so I factored that into the mix. Thumbprint cookies seemed to be the best idea, but those aren't even. The final outcome is to roll dough into a 1 inch diameter ball, roll it through sprinkles, press the dough down with two fingers so it's is the same thickness all the way across, then lightly press the center ridge you get down so the cookie is even and flat on top. It may sound complicated, but once you make a couple it goes pretty quick.

What is fun about these cookies is you can dye the dough however you like then come up with your own sprinkle combination to roll them through. I mix red and green crystals with regular sugar, little balls with regular sugar and even red and green crystals along with shaped sprinkles with regular sugar. There are so many combinations you can try. The regular sugar helps to stretch the fancy sprinkles (since they cost more) and adds a  touch of sparkle. The ones with the sugar and little balls are my favorites.

Be sure not to leave these cookies in the oven too long or they'll turn crumbly and dry. You don't even want them to be golden yet, just set. Pull them off the cookie sheet and set them on a cooling rack as soon as they come out. The cookies keep for awhile when stored in an air-tight container so you can make them ahead of time without any problem.

Baking Tricks
These are the silicone baking mats I use for cookies and LOVE. They are also great for cooking chicken and other foods in the oven. The baking sheets hold up well, I've had my set for a few years now. I'd be lost without my KitchenAid mixer, attachments and a good set of wooden spoons, too!

Meltaway Spritz Butter Cookies

by The Stay-at-Home Life

Prep Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Cook Time: 12 minutes

Keywords: bake dessert vanilla butter almond almond extract Christmas cookie fall spring summer winter

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Ingredients (4 dozen)

• 1 1/4 up powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tsp almond extract
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg
• Granulated sugar and sprinkles of choice to roll dough in

Instructions

Cream together powdered sugar, butter, almond extract and vanilla extract until very light and creamy

Add in egg and continue to cream ingredients together until well blended

In another bowl, mix flour and baking powder

Slowly pour flour mixture into the wet mixture, continuing to blend as you go until well combined

If you'd like to dye the dough, add the dye and mix well

Put dough in a bowl, cover and chill in the refrigerator at least one hour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Create your sprinkle/sugar blend

Form dough into 1-inch balls and roll in the sugar

Place on cookie sheet about 1 inch apart (you can fit 15 on a standard cookie sheet as the dough won't spread much)

Press each ball down using two fingers until dough is flattened yet still thick. You do not want thin dough or the cookies will break too easily. Dough should be uniform in thickness throughout.

Press down the center ridge that will be created lightly

Bake 12 minutes, or until dough is set but not browning at all

Immediately remove from cookie sheet onto a cooling rack

Cool completely then stack to store in an air-tight container or baggies

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This post contains affiliate links.


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Delicious Hummingbird Cake

The hummingbird cake is the cousin of the carrot cake and is perfect for Easter (or any time, really). After researching the name, it seems no one really knows how it got its name. It's possible it came from the "mmm" you say once you have the first, unexpected bite.

The recipe I used is adapted from one originally printed many years ago in Southern Living magazine. It seems the recipe is the most-requested one ever since it first ran back in the late 70s. My cousin first introduced me to it and I'll be making it many more times, I'm sure! M2 loves it since it has bananas.

Delicious Hummingbird Cake

by The Stay-at-Home Life

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

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Ingredients (Two Layer Cake)

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 3 beaten eggs
• 2 1/4 pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup oil
• 10 oz crushed pineapple, if from can undrained
• 3 large bananas, mashed

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon in a stand mixer and mix on stir setting until blended well.

Add eggs, vanilla, oil, pineapple and bananas and mix until all ingredients are moist

Spray two 8 inch round cake pans well so that the cake will come out easy after baking. Divide batter between the pans, they will be very full.

Bake 35-45 minutes, until toothpick inserted in the centers come out clean.

Let cake rest in the pans 30 minutes then take them out and place on cooling rack to cool completely.

Make your favorite cream cheese frosting.

Once cooled, put one half upside down and frost. Then place other half on top, ride side up, and frost.

Decorate as desired. Mine was for a spring party, so I dyed the frosting robin's egg blue, added chocolate sprinkles to symbolize a nest and dusted with clear sprinkles for sparkle.

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I mashed the bananas in the peel to make it easier.

They rise nice and high.

Yummy!