Peanut Butter Blossoms Recipe • 5★

Recipe from the Gerrero family

Adapted by The New York Times

Updated May 8, 2026

Craig Lee for The New York Times

1:56Credit...The New York Times

For as long as anyone can remember, wedding receptions in Pittsburgh have featured cookie tables, laden with dozens of homemade old-fashioned offerings like lady locks, pizzelles and buckeyes. For weeks ahead, sometimes months, mothers and aunts and grandmas and in-laws hunker down in the kitchen baking and freezing. These peanut butter and chocolate cookies were part of the spread at Laura Gerrero and Luke Wiehagen's wedding in 2009. Though peanut blossoms were popularized by Freda Smith in a 1957 Pillsbury Bake-Off competition, this version of the now-classic cookie came from the bride's family. —The New York Times

Featured in: The Wedding? I’m Here for the Cookies

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1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

4 ounces (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

½ cup smooth peanut butter (or other creamy nut butter)

½ cup granulated sugar, plus more for rolling

½ cup light brown sugar

1 tablespoon milk, half-and-half, oat milk or nut milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Nonstick spray or vegetable oil for cookie sheet (optional)

5 dozen (one 11-ounce package) Hershey’s Kisses, foil removed

Step 1Sift together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. Using an electric mixer, cream together butter, peanut butter, ½ cup granulated sugar and light brown sugar. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat until well blended. Gradually add flour mixture, mixing thoroughly. If the dough is very soft, refrigerate for about 1 hour.The New York Times CookingThe New York Times Cooking

Sift together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. Using an electric mixer, cream together butter, peanut butter, ½ cup granulated sugar and light brown sugar. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat until well blended. Gradually add flour mixture, mixing thoroughly. If the dough is very soft, refrigerate for about 1 hour.

The New York Times Cooking

Step 2Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray, oil or line a cookie sheet with nonstick liner and set aside. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. (For a precise number of cookies, divide the dough into 5 pieces, and shape each piece into 12 balls.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray, oil or line a cookie sheet with nonstick liner and set aside. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. (For a precise number of cookies, divide the dough into 5 pieces, and shape each piece into 12 balls.)

Step 3Roll cookies in sugar and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake until very light brown and puffed, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove sheet from oven and lightly press a candy kiss into center of each cookie, allowing it to crack slightly. Return to oven until light golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from oven, cool completely and store in an airtight container.The New York Times CookingThe New York Times Cooking

Roll cookies in sugar and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake until very light brown and puffed, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove sheet from oven and lightly press a candy kiss into center of each cookie, allowing it to crack slightly. Return to oven until light golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from oven, cool completely and store in an airtight container.

The New York Times Cooking

My grandmother, Freda Smith from Gibsonburg Ohio, created these cookies and was the Bake-Off prize winner. It is true she did not win the Grand Prize but her legacy lives on through these cookies. She would love that they became so beloved by so many. My mother and I made a TV commercial for Pillsbury flour in 1965 because Freda had passed away. What a gift she gave us. Enjoy her Peanut Blossoms and know a wonderful woman from Ohio created them for her Grandkids.

The recipe is wrong because it says it makes 5 dozen when it really makes 22 cookies

Longtime family tradition to use semisweet chocolate chips instead of Kisses. A less sweet chocolate makes them less cloying, there's a better chocolate-to-bite distribution, and the chips soften and then don't entirely harden after cooling. It's what's up.

Delicious cookies, although we got 33 and they were the same size as the ones in the video and baked for the same time. Our brown sugar was rock hard so after trying (and failing) at the microwave method we just put it on a cutting board and chopped it really tiny which worked perfectly! So satisfying to press the kisses into the half baked cookies. Made for a bake sale and they sold fast!

The cookies in this NYT article are amazing. I still have the original in my cookbook.

Highly recommend sprinkling some flaky sea salt on the cookies right when they come out of the oven, the flakes will stick perfectly to the warm kiss

Adapted from the Gerrero family

Source: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1012939-peanut-butter-blossoms