Peanut Butter Flowers are peanut butter cookies with a chocolate kiss on top, often served during winter holidays. Variations include different cookie textures and chocolate toppings. Care must be taken to insert the kisses at the right time and store them properly.
Peanut Butter Flowers are peanut butter cookies topped with a kiss of chocolate candy, creating the look of a flower with a dark center and giving this cookie its name. There are several variations of the recipe, but the best known uses a simple peanut butter cookie recipe. Several minutes before these cookies are due to bake, they are removed and a single candy kiss is placed in the center of each cookie. The biscuits are then placed back in the oven for a few minutes so they can brown, but are removed before the chocolate melts and loses its shape. While the recipe isn’t particularly difficult, due to their striking appearance, these cookies are often served around the winter holidays.
Many people follow the standard peanut butter flower recipe of a peanut butter sugar cookie topped with a milk chocolate candy kiss, but many variations exist. For example, some recipes make a much softer, chewier peanut butter cookie as a base for flowers. Other variations involve differences in the chocolate topping, with some recipes using a dark chocolate kiss, chocolate squares, or even a chocolate drizzle. The latter option, however, isn’t particularly popular, since part of the flavor profile of peanut butter flowers is the strong chocolatey jolt a person experiences while eating one of these cookies.
One of the most interesting aspects of peanut butter flowers is the fact that they are considered a traditional winter holiday cookie in the United States. This is despite the fact that they resemble sunflowers or black-eyed Susans rather than traditional Christmas symbols. They are very interesting cookies, however, and that probably contributes to their status as a special occasion cookie.
Another reason why peanut butter flowers are usually made for special occasions is that special care must be taken to insert the kisses into the cookies at just the right time. Many recipes call for the cook to remove a hot tray of cookies from the oven and then quickly and easily insert the chocolate chunks into the cookies before returning the tray to the oven. This is a tricky process, because the cook must then watch the cookies to make sure they brown properly without overcooking and causing the kisses to melt and lose their shape. Finally, Peanut Butter Flowers can be difficult to store, as they can’t be stacked on top of each other and there’s the concern of marring the surface of the chocolate kiss.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
