Soft Candy Cane Kiss Cookies with a Chocolate Star

I found this great recipe on Pintrest and just had to try it. It looks so festive and I love peppermint so it was a great recipe to try. I combined parts of the original recipe from Recipe Girl and parts of the Hershey's Candy Cane Blossom cookie recipe to make these. I wanted the cookie to be soft and chewy like a little pillow of goodness!

As I was taking the first batch out of the oven I had to move the bag of Brach's dark chocolate stars, from making these peanut butter blossom cookies, out of the way and inspiration hit me. Why not put both the chocolate star and the kiss on top? In many places the Chocolate stars are hard to find, I have to order mine on Amazon now. You can substitute Hershey's drops or any kind of chocolate disk or melting wafer.  You could even use 5-6 chocolate chips on top then press the kiss into them once they've melted a bit.

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Candy Cane Kiss Blossom Cookies

Yield: 2 1/2 dozen cookies

Prep Time: 30 min 

Cook Time: 12 min 

When the fall holidays arrive, the Candy Cane Kisses begin to appear on supermarket shelves too. These are an incredibly delicious flavor delivered by the Hershey’s Kisses people. And they’re amazing tucked into a cookie too.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 1/4 cups butter, at room temperature
1/2  teaspoon peppermint extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Candy Cane flavored Hershey's Kisses, finely chopped- 15-20
granulated sugar
additional, unwrapped Candy Cane Kisses- about 30-32
Chocolate stars- about 30-32

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Make room in either refrigerator or freezer for your cookie sheet. Or you can do what I do which is to just let them sit out for an hour and they'll set up.
2. In large mixer bowl, combine powdered sugar, butter, extracts and egg. Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often until creamy (2-3 minutes). 
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to wet mixture and beat, scraping bowl until just blended.  Stir in chopped Kisses.
4. Shape dough into 3/4-inch to 1-inch balls; roll in granulated sugar. Place 1-inch apart on cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until set.
5. As soon as they come out of the oven, press a chocolate star  point side down in the center of each cookie. They'll crack a little around the edges, so just use your fingers to kind of hold the cookie together while you press the chocolate on.  Do all the cookies on the tray then go back and place a kiss on top of the chocolate star pressing down until the chocolate squeezes out from under the kiss forming a flower around it.

 You can leave the cookies out to set up or put cookie sheet (with cookies) immediately into the freezer (preferred) or refrigerator so that the Kisses will set quickly. Store in a covered container- at room temperature for up to a week. In the freezer they should be ok for a month.