Hershey's Kiss Thumbprint Cookies

This month's Alphabakes letter is X and my co-host Ros and I are accepting Xmas entries to make life a bit easier for you all- but I wanted to think of something different as well if I could. I did a bit of brainstorming and realised that X also meant 'kiss'- so I've decided to use Hershey's Kisses in a bake!

I thought thumbprint cookies would be a good way to use the Kisses, and they would also be a good edible Christmas gift so this is the ideal time of year to make them. I did come across some conflicting ideas about how to make the thumb print and when to add the chocolate kiss though - I'd be interested if anyone has made these before and what they recommend!

The recipe I used told me to bake the cookies for 5 minutes, press my thumb into each one to make an indentation, and return them to the oven for 8 minutes. But the cookies are far too hot to do this when they have been in the oven! I waited a minute or two until they had cooled a little but found that in that time the cookies had hardened enough that I couldn't make a thumbprint without the cookies starting to break. So when I made my second batch, I made the thumbprint before they went in the oven and that worked fine - the cookies still had the indentation after they were baked. 

I also had trouble adding the chocolate kisses. I placed them onto the cookies when they had been out of the oven for about ten minutes so I thought they had cooled enough, but I was wrong and the kisses just melted! So I left the cookies to cool completely, and then used a little melted plain chocolate to dip the Kisses and stick them onto the cookies. I was taking to Ros about this however and she said that when she made thumbprint cookies, her recipe said to put the kisses on the cookies and then return them to the oven - and the kisses didn't melt. The only explanation I can think of for this is that I was using caramel-filled Hershey's Kisses, so the chocolate is a lot thinner, and the solid chocolate ones would probably be slower to melt. I also wish I had bought the Hershey's candy cane holiday kisses when I saw them in the US in November but at the time I wasn't sure what I would use them for.

I based my bake on this recipe from Friends Food Family.com but added more sugar as I didn't find these particularly sweet. I also didn't see the need to dip the cookies in egg white and used the whole egg in the recipe instead.

To make around 20 cookies, you need:

1 and 1/2 cups butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla flavouring

1 cup brown sugar

3 cups plain flour

1/2 tsp of salt

20 Hershey's Kisses

Preheat the oven to 175C. Cream the butter and the sugar.

Add the eggs, vanilla, salt and flour and mix until you have a sticky dough.

Roll into small balls and press down slightly on a lined baking sheet. As mentioned above, I would recommend using your thumb to make an indent in the cookies now rather than when they come out of the oven.

 Bake for around 8 minutes then leave to cool. This photo shows a mixture of the two batches - the ones where I tried to make the thumb print after they came out of the oven, which didn't really work, and some where I did it beforehand - though it's a bit hard to see the difference in this photo, I did have several cookies with proper indentations!

Add the Hershey's Kisses- I stuck these on with melted chocolate. They stayed on well and looked pretty good in the end.

I boxed these up to take into work, though I think they would also look really nice in a glass cookie jar on your kitchen counter or given as a gift.

As I mentioned I am sending these Hershey's Kisses thumbprint cookies to Alphabakes, as X is for kiss!

I am also sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Kate of What Kate Baked and Karen of Lavender and Lovage, as their challenge this month is to come up with festive baked gifts and I think these cookies would make a cute gift.

I am also sharing these with Cakeyboi for his challenge Treat Petite, as the theme is Christmas and I think these are quite festive (and would have been more so if I'd used the candy cane kisses!).