These super easy soft and chewy peanut butter blossom cookies are fun to make and come together quickly (or the dough stores well for making ahead) I top mine with Peanut Butter Cups, but chocolate kisses work great too! Roll your peanut butter blossoms in sugar for a crunch, or sprinkles for a cute festive twist.
Hi hi! I am just popping in to share this super easy peanut butter blossom cookie recipe with you! I LOVE the combo of Peanut Butter and chocolate, and so the mix of a salty-sweet peanut butter cookie topped with a peanut butter cup?! Yes please. While these are typically a christmas / holiday cookie, I absolutely make them year round.
These peanut butter blossoms use a really simple dough (we do brown the butter because why not), which doesn't require chilling, so you can have these baked in about 30 minutes.
Alternatively the dough both chills and freezes super well, so they are a great make ahead cookie too!
I use the same dough to make my Peanut Butter Cookies so if you are looking for an easy double up make sure to check out that post too.
Important Ingredients in Peanut Butter Blossoms
This recipe uses only a few ingredients which are likely already in your pantry!
- Brown Butter. I love love brown butter in everything. Browning the butter in these Peanut Butter Blossoms is a super easy step which adds a delicious toasty depth of flavour to the cookie dough.
- Brown and Granulated (white) sugar: Brown sugar adds flavour and makes the cookie soft and thicker, and white sugar helps with spread and chewiness. Together they create the perfect cookie.
- Peanut Butter. It is quite important to use the right kind of peanut butter when making these cookies. I use a smooth (creamy) peanut butter.
- Sprinkles, raw sugar, etc for rolling: The fun part about these peanut butter blossoms is that you can finish them any way that you want! Roll them in crunchy sugar, sprinkles of your choice, mix and match with whatever you like.
- Peanut Butter Cups. I use peanut butter cups instead of a chocolate kiss but you can use whatever you like here.
A Quick Note on Brown Butter:
You will notice that there are two quantities of butter in the recipe - the initial quantity called for in the recipe (130g), and then a weighed out quantity in the method (100g). This is intentional and is not a typo.
When you brown butter, you are cooking off the water in the butter, and cooking the milk solids, which is what gives you the brown part of brown butter. Due to the loss of moisture, the overall volume of the butter when it goes from solid or melted butter to brown butter will decrease.
The recipe accounts for this which is why I have given you two quantities of butter. Butter varies internationally in how much fat / water it contains, so some butter will cook down to a lower yield than others depending on how much water you cook out, hence the need to re-weigh your butter once you have browned it.
Science for the win. Use a scale, my friends.
What makes this a blossom cookie?
A blossom cookie is one that is baked as a ball of cookie dough, and when fresh from the oven, you press something into the top of it. It's a super fun way to jazz up a recipe and adding the candy fresh from the oven is super fun.
Kisses vs Peanut Butter Cups
Look, i'm going to say it - I don't really like Hershey's chocolate kisses. They often aren't good quality chocolate and just don't taste that good to me.
So, I switched them out with a mini peanut butter cup. These ones come unwrapped in a bag, but whatever kind of mini peanut butter cup you can get will work.
If you do like chocolate kisses, by all means feel free to use them! They just aren't personally for me but I tested the recipe with them and they work super well and look really cute too.
How do you stop the chocolate from melting?
Adding chocolate to a cookie fresh out of the oven is somewhat of a recipe for disaster but there are two workarounds:
- Leave the cookies to stand for a little bit. Once you pull the blossoms from the oven you want to let them stand for 1-2 minutes so they are still soft but not ripping hot. This should help prevent too much meltage.
- Freeze the chocolate. Starting with cold chocolate will mean that the chocolate is less likely to melt - just pop them into the freezer before you start the baking process.
Make sure that you leave the blossoms to cool completely - this may take a wee bit more time than other cookies to let the chocolate properly set.
What is the best kind of Peanut Butter to use?
While substitutions in baking can often be made, the kind of peanut butter you use for this recipe is important - you want to make sure you use a non 'natural' style of peanut butter. Think a creamy peanut butter - the one which stays fully homogenised all the time and you don't have to stir to fix any oil separation.
I used a smooth peanut butter - I haven't tried a crunchy but it might work. Make sure that you also take note of whether the peanut butter has salt or not - I used peanut butter that did, but if you use one which does not have any salt added you may need to add extra salt to the recipe to compensate for this.
What can I roll my Peanut Butter Blossoms in?
The list here is really endless and is why these peanut butter blossoms are so fun to make and especially good to make with kids.
You can roll these blossoms in all kinds of things - think sprinkles, sparkly sanding sugar, raw sugar (turbinado, demerara etc), chopped nuts, pearl sugar.... you do you here.
You don't have to keep it all the same through the batch either, I tried a bunch of different finishes across the cookies and baked them all together and they were fine.
How do you store Peanut Butter Blossoms?
Store your peanut butter blossoms in an airtight container for up to a week. Because they are a soft cookie they do start to get soft over time, but they will still be delicious.
Can I make Peanut Butter Blossoms ahead of time?
Yes. I tested this extensively with my Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe and this dough is a STABLE girlie. Which means that it is super easy to make these peanut butter blossoms ahead. You can see below that I tested a few ways and they all baked up basically identical.
Often you need to reduce the oven temperature slightly when baking from chilled and frozen but for this particular recipe I found that it was not needed and the cookies baked up just fine at the temperature written in the recipe.
- Chilling the dough: I chilled the dough for up to two days - roll it out and shape into balls, then chill in an airtight container. If you are making a few hours ahead you can roll in the sprinkles / sugar and chill otherwise I like to leave them plain and leave the dough to stand for 5 minutes or so while the oven preheats and then roll the cookies. This is mainly if i'm rolling them in sugar as the sugar can attract moisture and go a little soggy. This is just how I prefer to do it so if you want to coat them and then store them chilled by all means go ahead.
- Freezing the dough. Same concept here - I like to space the dough balls slightly on a parchment paper lined sheet pan and freeze until solid (about 30 minutes) then transfer to an airtight container. Again, I prefer to freeze them plain then leave the dough to sit for 5 minutes or so to thaw just slightly before rolling in sugar / sprinkles and baking.
For all my tips and tricks on freezing other cookie dough check out my post: how to freeze cookie dough and bake from frozen
One Dough, Two recipes - a batch baking win!
You know I love a recipe that can do double or triple duty and this is another of those - I used the exact same dough to make these peanut butter blossoms and my Peanut Butter Cookies. They also bake at the same temperature so you can either make a bunch all at once or double the recipe and freeze some for later. Batch baking for the win.
FYI if you are after other recipes that you can also do this with - my raspberry thumbprint cookies and my 6 ingredient snowball cookies also use the same dough!
Frequently Asked Questions
What tools and equipment do you use?
You can find a full list of the tools and equipment I use on my products page
Can I make these without browning the butter?
I haven't tried it, but it should work fine - just use 100g melted butter in the place of the brown butter.
Can I make these with other nut butters?
Again I haven't tried it sorry but you are welcome to. If you're allergic to peanut butter I would look for another cookie recipe not based around Peanut Butter!
Can I use Salted Butter?
Yes - it will work just fine. You can either adjust the salt content or leave as is if you like your baking salty (especially good with peanut butter)
❤️ Made this recipe and love it? ❤️
I would LOVE for you to leave me a review and star rating below to let me know how you liked it! Also, please make sure to tag me on Instagram!
Answers to your baking questions
Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:
- baking in grams
- adjusting oven temperatures
- what kind of salt to use
- and many more!
I've curated and answered them all for your easy reference in this frequently asked questions post!
Soft and Chewy Double Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies
- Author: Erin Clarkson
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Prep Time: 15 minutes -
Cook Time: 15 minutes
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Total Time: 30 minutes
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Yield: 28 Cookies -
Category: Cookies -
Method: Baking -
Cuisine: American
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeDescription
These super easy soft and chewy peanut butter blossom cookies are fun to make and come together quickly (or the dough stores well for making ahead) I top mine with Peanut Butter Cups, but chocolate kisses work great too! Roll your peanut butter blossoms in sugar for a crunch, or sprinkles for a cute festive twist.
Ingredients
- 130g unsalted butter, cold from the fridge is fine
- 80g granulated sugar
- 80g brown sugar (light or dark is fine)
- 130g smooth peanut butter (not natural)
- 1 large egg (50g not including the shell), at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract
- 155g All-Purpose Flour
- ½ tsp (3g) kosher salt
- ½ tsp baking soda
- Turbinado / demerara sugar or sprinkles for rolling the cookies
- Mini Peanut Butter Cups or Hershey's Kisses for pressing onto the cookies (recipe makes about 28 cookies)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 330°f / 165°c. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper. If you want to make sure that the chocolate you are putting into the middle of the cookies doesn’t melt, unwrap and place into the freezer while the cookies bake.
- Place the butter in a medium saucepan, and place over medium heat. Cook until the butter has melted, then continue cooking, stirring with a whisk, until the butter foams and turns golden brown and nutty - this should take about 3-4 minutes. Turn the heat down if you are worried it is going too fast - a good way to know that it is getting close is that it will start making much less noise as the butter boils.
- Weigh out 100g (see notes section below) of the brown butter into a medium bowl and leave it to sit for 10-15 minutes so that it does not scramble your eggs. To speed up this process, swirl the bowl often, or you can place the bowl in a larger bowl of cold water and whisk the butter frequently until it cools.
- Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, peanut butter, egg, and vanilla to the bowl. Mix using an electric hand mixer or a whisk (or you can do this using the paddle attachment in a stand mixer) until the mixture has thickened and lightened in colour.
- Add the flour, salt, and baking soda, and mix until just combined.
- Place the sugar or sprinkles you are using to roll the cookies into a small bowl. Using a size #60 cookie scoop, scoop 20g balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets. Roll each ball of dough between your palms to shape it into a ball, then roll each ball in the sugar or sprinkles (I find it easiest to pop it into the bowl and shake the bowl to cover evenly). Arrange the cookies on the baking sheet - I can usually fit 12 per sheet but if you want to divide them evenly then that works too. You do not need to press down the cookies - bake them as balls.
- Bake the cookies for 11-12 minutes (I do one pan at a time), until the edges are set and are lightly golden brown. They may still look a little under done in the middles - this is fine.
- Remove the cookies from the oven and, if desired, use a cookie cutter slightly larger than the cookie to ‘scoot’ them into a perfectly round shape. Leave them to sit for 1-2 minutes, then carefully press a peanut butter cup or hershey’s kiss into the middle of each cookie.
- Leave the cookies to cool on the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Store cookies at room temperature for up to a week.
Notes
You will notice that there are two quantities of butter in the recipe - the initial quantity of butter, then a second measurement in the method which is the quantity of brown butter. The larger initial quantity is to account for water loss when browning - read more about that in my FAQ.
If you are using the recipe scaling feature (2x or 3x) be aware that any quantities, measurements, pan sizes, and cooking times given in the method do not scale automatically - it's only the quantities in the Ingredient List that scale automatically.
The post Soft and Chewy Double Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies appeared first on Cloudy Kitchen.
