Hershey's Blossoms: or, Betty Crocker will not be outdone

Who would have thought that the Hershey people don't have the best chocolate recipe?

Peanut Butter Blossoms 48 Hershey's Kisses 1½ cups all-purpose flour 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt ½ cup shortening ¾ cup creamy Peanut Butter ⅓ cup granulated sugar ⅓ cup (packed) brown sugar 1 egg 2 tbsp milk 1 tsp vanilla Additional sugar for rolling Heat oven to 375°. Have baking sheets lined with ungreased foil or parchment paper. Remove wrappers from chocolates, set aside. Stir together flour, salt, and baking soda. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat shortening until creamy. Add peanut butter and beat until well blended. Add sugars and beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Mix in the flour. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar; place on cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until very lightly browned on the edges. Immediately press a chocolate into center of each cookie. They will crack around the edges. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. Source: Hershey's Kisses bag, probably 2013-15

Before we get any further, I would like to propose that even before AI, ad copywriters were never real humans. Would a sentient person with deep thoughts and real feelings write a phrase like "Peanut butter cookies with a HERSHEY'S KISSES Brand Milk Chocolate in the center"?

We're making blossom cookies because when visiting friends, one should bring out the really good stuff. I cut this off a bag of Hershey's Kisses years ago (around the time I wrote about shoving cauliflower through a meat grinder, actually) and never got around to making them. Then I lost the slip of plastic and made the cookies from Betty Crocker's website instead. Much later, the recipe we never made fell out of a box of assorted clutter.

I thought it'd be the same as the one we made already. Both Betty Crocker and Hershey are corporate brands, so it makes sense that one company would license a recipe to the other. But I cross-checked just to be sure. Betty Crocker uses butter, but the Hershey people use shortening. You know, the unnaturally white stuff that absolutely does not creep me out.

Incidentally, the Hershey's people stopped printing the recipe on their chocolate bags some time after I cut this out. Today, you get this:

Really helpful, guys.

Anyway, we couldn't decide in the store whether to use chocolate or strawberry kisses in these. On the one hand, chocolate is always the answer. But at the same time, artificial strawberry flavoring is one of the food industry's greatest creations. We made the obvious compromise. (And yes, the pink candies tasted exactly like a synthetic strawberry shake from any drive-thru. It is very fortunate that the bag contained a lot more candies than we needed.)

After pressing the candy into the hot cookies, we found out that the strawberry kisses have a lower melting point than chocolate. They collapsed on themselves before the cookies cooled.

We didn't throw these cookies away, but they didn't vanish off the plate like Betty Crocker's did. They tasted just fine, but they were just a bit drier than Betty's. So if you're going to make blossom cookies (and they do have a way of bespelling people), I'm going to suggest you use the Betty Crocker version. 

But I won't say these weren't bad. When I suggested giving some away, I was decisively refused.