Peanut Butter Cookies - Plain, Kisses & Turkeys

I am sitting here, on the last cold Monday morning of 2013, enjoying the fireplace and the Christmas tree.  Even though I love the Christmas lights and decorations, I am ready for them to come down and move forward.   I cannot believe the year is over and am shocked that I have done so little blogging - I even missed by blog-iversary.   I have so many things that I have wanted to write about, I just haven't gotten to it.  I am the typical perfectionist - handicapped by wanting things to be just right.   But I see that if I wait until I have the time to do my blog and re-check it 50 times before posting, it will never get done.  As my two loyal readers have urged me to just do it and not worry about it being perfect.....I will try!  I am not one for New Year's Resolutions, but that will be mine this year!

I guess I will start with a new favorite cookie.  Just before Thanksgiving, I found a recipe for peanut butter cup turkey cookies on Bake at 350.  They are so adorable, I had to make them!  The cookie is great and decorating them to look like turkeys was a lot of fun.  I made them for Little C and her friend.  They put the peanut butter cups and eyes on the turkeys.  The white chocolate chips were a little difficult to stick in to the peanut butter cups, but we managed, without too many mangled turkey faces.

You start with a large peanut butter cookie and attach a small peanut butter cup with melted chocolate for the body.  White chocolate chips with melted chocolate make the eyes.  Then colored peanut butter frosting is used for the beak, feet and feathers.  Now, I hate to admit this because it is quite ridiculous, but in my state of trying to do too much in one day, I got a little confused when I was decorating.  Of course I didn't slow down to look at the recipe picture, and even though it didn't seem right, I put the beak where the feet were supposed to be.  Ugh!  Once I realized it, it was a slightly easy fix.  The girls didn't notice, so it was ok.  What's a little confusion about Turkey anatomy whey there is a cookie loaded with frosting and candy!?!?  They were still super cute!

The recipe makes a lot of cookies and I didn't decorate all of them.  The plain cookies are great too and freeze well.  When Mr. SBQ tasted them, he said they would be a good cookie base for Peanut Blossoms.  Perfect!  Last year I made the recipe off the Hershey Kisses bag and wasn't thrilled with how they turned out.   I made the Peanut Blossoms on Christmas Eve, using this recipe and they were wonderful.  Yay!

For the turkey cookies, I used a larger cookie scoop, and for the kiss cookies, I used the small cookie scoop.  I made the balls of dough, rolled them in sugar, baked for about 10 minutes, pressed the kisses in to each cookie and placed on the cooling rack.  One thing about these cookies, they don't need to bake as long as it seems.  I usually flip one cookie over while they are still in the oven - if it is getting golden on the bottom, I take them out no matter what the tops look like.  I usually let them cool on the pan for about 5 minutes.  These I just left on the pan until we had all the kisses in place.

Here is the basic cookie recipe slightly adapted from Imperial Sugar. (the link will take you to the full recipe for the turkey cookies)

Peanut Butter Cookies
3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
Dash of sea salt
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup smooth peanut butter


Preheat oven to 350.  Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together.  Set aside.
In a large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs and vanilla until combined.  Add in the peanut butter and mix until smooth.
Stir in the flour mixture.
Scoop the dough onto the prepared sheets (2T/large scoop for large cookies - bake about 13 minutes; Small scoop for peanut blossom cookies- bake about 10 minutes).  For the turkey cookies or just a large cookie, flatten slightly - I use a ramekin dipped in sugar.  For the smaller cookies, there is no need to flatten.
Bake until the cookies are golden and baked through. 

The Perfect Peanut Blossom Cookie

Turkey Peanut Butter Cup Cookies