Hershey's Secret Kiss Cookies

I usually make some standard cookies every year with a new one thrown in.  This year, though, I was going to forego the new recipe because I just didn’t have it in me until I saw the recipe for Hershey's Secret Kiss Cookies (see note below) on the back of a Hershey's Kisses bag.

I LOVE Hershey's Kisses and Kiss cookies (to the rest of the world peanut butter blossoms) are one of my favorites so I thought this could be good.

I couldn't find the recipe online but this is a similar cookie.  The only differences being the name, the use of original Kisses, and no almonds or almond extract.

Note: I threw out the actual Hershey's Kisses bag because I had transcribed the recipe into a book my aunt got me.  Unfortunately I tend to abbreviate and leave things out because I only write down the recipe as I like it (aka It called for nuts. I left them out because no way would I put nuts in a baked good as you my faithful readers should already know.)  The point is that if Hershey ever decides to publish this recipe on their website, the name and particulars may be slightly off from what I am putting here.


Moving on to the baking...

The actual dough was pretty easy to whip up.  There was a lack of egg which surprised me but I went with it.

When I formed the dough around each Kiss (time-consuming but not hard), I tried to keep the amount low. I tend to make cookies much bigger than the recipe calls for and it usually causes an issue with the timing and I wanted to get these right because I was putting them into the convection oven.

The recipe said to use 36 kisses.  I ended up needing about 50. So I guess I could have been less stingy with the dough on each one.

I figured these cookies wouldn’t spread so I was able to put them pretty close together on the cookie sheets and I baked them all in one go. Yeah!

The recipe says to wait until the cookies are set but not brown. I took them out at the specified amount of time and figured if they were raw, there was no egg in them so at least we wouldn’t get salmonella.

When they came out of the oven, they looked like little ghosts:

 
And I became concerned because this was not how they were pictured and they had got a bit browned.

But, between moving the cookies to the rack and rolling them in powdered sugar, they lost their brown edges.

And voila!:

Inside:

Saturday when I made these, I wasn’t impressed. They were OK but eh. However, they got better with age and I was popping these like there was no tomorrow on Sunday before they made their way into the freezer.

Final verdict:  They are worth a shot.  I think these could actually be pretty good with some of the other kinds of Kisses they have out there.  So maybe I will venture out next time.