Guest Cook Barbara White Daille

Welcome Barbara White Daille to The After Work Cook. Barbara is sharing one of her favorite recipes that she makes during the holiday.

Peanut Blossoms Recipe - Courtesy of Pillsbury

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
Sugar
48 Hershey's® Kisses® Brand milk chocolates, unwrapped 

1. Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, combine flour, 1/2 cup sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, shortening, peanut butter, milk, vanilla and egg; mix with electric mixer on low speed until stiff dough forms.
2. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; roll in sugar. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake at 375°F. for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately top each cookie with 1 milk chocolate candy, pressing down firmly so cookie cracks around edge; remove from cookie sheets.

Thank you to Mary for inviting me to the blog!  I’m here today to chat about a favorite holiday recipe.  And I will confess, all of my faves contain an ingredient I totally love:  chocolate. 

Raise your hand if you agree chocolate’s so wonderful, it deserves to be its own food group.  ;)

My absolute favorite holiday dessert is a cookie called Peanut Blossoms.  They’ve been around forever, so you’ve probably heard of them, but just in case not, they’re your basic peanut butter cookie but with the yummy addition of a Hershey’s Chocolate Kiss on top.

What’s not to love, right?

This is the traditional recipe I use is a Peanut Blossoms from Pillsbury.

And after all my years of baking and eating these cookies, I’ve come up with some tips you might like to consider if you decide to make them yourself.

First of all, once the cookies come out of the oven and you’ve added a Kiss on top of each one, quickly transfer the entire batch to a separate (non-heated) cookie sheet or the inverted lids of large cookie tins.  Then put the sheet or tins into the freezer for just a few minutes. This keeps the Kisses from melting from the heat of the cookies, which also helps keep their “kiss” shape.

At that point, you can store the cookies in plastic containers or cookie tins.  They hold up extremely well in the freezer.  Just be careful to stagger the cookies to allow room for the Kisses when you stack them in the tin or plasticware; otherwise, the Kisses will press through the soft, freshly baked cookies and, I hate to say it but (groan alert) that’s the way the cookie crumbles.  ;)

When you’re ready to eat the cookies, I recommend heating them up again.  Depending on your microwave, this takes just a few seconds to a minute or so.  The cookies soften and the Kisses get gooey—and believe me when I tell you they are BEYOND AWESOME!

Hope you give the recipe a try.

And if you have a fave holiday dessert, I’m sure we would all love to know!

Barbara White Daille lives in the sunny Southwest where she and her husband love the lizards in the front yard but could do without the scorpions in the bathroom. She also loves writing, reading, and chocolate. Come to think of it, she enjoys writing about those subjects, too! 

Barbara “published” her first short story at the age of nine, then typed The End to her first novel many years later...in the eighth grade. Now she's writing contemporary romance on a daily basis. Currently, she’s hard at work at books in her two ongoing series, The Hitching Post Hotel (Harlequin Books) and Snowflake Valley (Entangled Publishing).

The first book in the Snowflake Valley series, Snowbound with Mr. Wrong, is on sale for 99 cents at all online etailers, all during November!

Worst. Day. Ever. After Lyssa Barnett’s sister tricks her into reprising her role at Snowflake Valley's

annual children's party, she doesn’t think anything can be worse than squeezing into her too-small elf costume. Then tall, dark, and way too handsome Nick Tavlock shows up to play Santa...and an unexpected storm leaves them snowbound in the isolated lodge.

The last thing Nick wants is to spend a cozy Christmas Eve with a trio of kids and the woman who dumped him. But as much as Lyssa frustrates him, he can't stop thinking about her. And soon, he's fighting very un-Santa-like thoughts of kissing a certain sexy Miss Elf under the mistletoe. As Nick starts to fall for Lyssa all over again, he knows it will take nothing short of a miracle to have Lyssa inhis arms on Christmas Day.

She hopes you'll check out her stories and look for her on social media.

Website  https://www.barbarawhitedaille.com
Blog  https://www.barbarawhitedaille.com/blog

Newsletter  https://www.barbarawhitedaille.com/newsletter

Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/barbarawhitedaille

Twitter  https://twitter.com/BarbaraWDaille

Amazon author page  http://bit.ly/azbwd

Entangled author page  http://entangledpublishing.com/category/barbara-white-daille/

Harlequin author page  https://www.harlequin.com/shop/authors/23759_barbara-white-daille.html     

Bookbub author page https://www.bookbub.com/authors/barbara-white-daille

Goodreads author page http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/529361.Barbara_White_Daille

Thank you, Barbara, for being my guest cook.