Laura's Baking Talent: Pumpkin Spice Kiss Cookies

So I'm so excited that it is Pumpkin Spice week. This week is inspired by my favorite drink at Starbucks. The Pumpkin Spice Latte. I love them! It is all part of the fall tradition. We had our first one on the way to Yellowstone when we were layed over in Chicago. It almost made the extra 3 hours of waiting worth it... well maybe not. It did certainly make the time more enjoyable.

So I made these cookies a little over a week ago. I had lots of them so Jim took them to work. Everyone gave them rave reviews. I think there are even some asking for a repeat tasting :) These went over so well... I'm actually nervous to send in the next treat for everyone to try. Crazy huh!

These are a varied version of the Peanut Butter Blossoms that you always see around Christmas time. I guess people probably make them all year round, but we mainly make them at Christmas. I love the idea of taking this yummy cookie and adapting it for the fall. Love it!

So I have a semi embarrassing story to tell. Remember when we had the mouse in the house, and I had to be super women to catch it. Well since then we had one more mouse in our house, and I was really freaked out. What if they were mouse friends... and ummmm... had mouse children. This could be a continuous cycle of mouseness. Yes I'm pretty sure mouseness is a word.

Well this week during dinner we heard this squeak squeak. It could have been one of Ginny's dog toys. However Ginny was eating her dinner so that didn't make sense. Physically can't eat and play with squeaky toys. Then we follow the sound, and Harry is carrying a mouse in his mouth. The ironic thing is he is not just carrying a mouse but he is carrying it from the outside into our house. So our guess is that Harry has brought in all the mice. I think this is a sound guess, since Harry has been near each incident of mouseness. This is totally wrong right!

So we chased Harry, and the mouse was dropped so then there was chasing of Harry... the chasing of the mouse, and ofcoarse Ginny got in on it. I mean really chasing a mouse and Harry is way better than dinner. Everything has worked out and I guess this means we won't have a whole mouse family... But again... our own cat was bringing them in the house!

Now back to today's cookies. Yummy and delicous! They are also far better to think about than mice.

Ingrediants

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 package Hershey's Pumpkin Spice Kisses
1/4 cup sugar, for rolling cookies in

Start by unwrapping the kisses. You will get about 2.5 dozen cookies. However you may need to taste a few kisses to make sure that they are good. Put them in the freezer while you make the dough.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line the cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the vanilla and eggs to the mixture, and mix until well combined.

In another medium sized bowl combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Slowly add this dry mixture to the wet mixture.

Put 1/4 cup of sugar in a small bowl that will be used to roll the cookies in. Take tablespoon size balls of the cookie and roll them in the sugar you set aside.

Bake the cookies for 7-8 minutes. Once they are out of the oven. Push one of the frozen pumpkin spice kisses into each one. The kisses may still melt a little bit from the warm cookies. To stop this you can put the whole cookie sheet in the fridge.

Eat and Enjoy!