Five GOLDEN Treats! Peanut Butter Blossoms

I lived a cookie deprived life up until I was in my mid 20s.  Mom wasn't much of a baker and since the family seemed OK with Archway cookies, that is typically what we had.  I still remember the first time I had Peanut Butter Blossoms when I was working at Lockheed in Sunnyvale and I prevailed upon the baker (Jane...DANG, I'm good, although I will say, it took me a while to remember her name) for the recipe.  I'm sure there are a zillion out there but this recipe is easy and everyone loves it, so I stick with it.  I think you'll love it too:
Peanut Butter Blossoms (makes about 4 dozen cookies)
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup shortening (I used butter flavor crisco)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 Tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Sift flour, soda and salt together and set aside.
Cream peanut butter and shortening until well mixed then add sugars.  When well creamed, add egg and mix well, vanilla and mix well, and milk and mix well.  Add dry ingredients and mix well.  You should have a fairly stiff dough that looks like this:

Roll dough into 1 in balls (I use the smallest pampered chef scoop) and roll in sugar (for the first time, I used vanilla sugar, only because I wanted to see if you could taste the subtle vanilla flavor.  You can.  Plain granulated sugar is fine):

Then place the dough on those awesome heavy aluminum baking sheets you rushed out to get.  You DID rush out and got them right?  If not, when you finally break down and do, you'll be kicking yourself for not having gotten them the first time I suggested it.

Bake in a 375 preheated oven for 8 minutes then remove and the cookies, which, no are NOT done yet will look like this:

Ever so gently, place a Hershey's kiss (after it's been defoiled of course) gently in the center of each each cookie and press down.  Return pan to oven for another 2-4 minutes.  Remove and let cool slightly on pan.  IF you used that awesome aluminum cookie sheet, the cookies will pop right off with a slight nudge.  If not, well...
End result are a plateful of these peanutbuttery goodnesses:

I'll bet your checking your cabinets to see if you have some Hershey's Kisses aren't you?