Every Christmas, for as long as I can remember, my mom and I baked Christmas cookies. The cookies were meant for Santa when my brother and I were little. When we got older, the cookies were made and decorated out of enjoyment and excitement. One of the recipes, the Hershey Kiss Cookie, tasted really good no matter which way we changed the batch to fit individual tastes at the time.

You can make Hershey Kiss Cookies using many different variations on the original theme. Most recipes call for peanut butter and are referred to as Peanut Butter Blossoms. My family prefers the original chocolate and almond or cherry kiss cookies. Some people like lemon and others make an all chocolate version of the cookie. No matter how you decide to make it, Hershey kiss cookies make a great addition to your holiday dessert table.

Things You'll Need:

• 48 Hershey milk chocolate kisses or milk chocolate kisses with almonds
• ½ cup or 1 stick of softened butter or margarine
• ½ cup of shortening
• ½ cup brown if sugar (packed)
• ¼ cup of granulated
• sugar
• 1medium-sized
•  
• egg
• 1
• teaspoon of almond
• extract
• 2
• and ½ cups of all-purpose baking
• flour
• 1
• teaspoon of baking soda
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• ½ cup of Maraschino cherries (drained and chopped)
• 2 cups of walnuts or almonds (finely chopped)

1. Heat your oven to 375 degrees, add grease to your baking sheets and remove all the wrappers from your chocolate kisses.
2. Beat butter, shortening, brown sugar, granulated sugar in a bowl or mixer until it turns to a fluffy consistency. Add your one egg and the almond extract; mix until the two ingredients all blended together. Pour in the flour, baking soda and salt until the dry ingredients blend into those already mixed together. Add the dry ingredients in slowly to avoid losing flour from your mixer. Pour in the chopped cherries once everything else is blended.
3. Roll the dough until you form a 1-inch ball. Mix together an egg white with water and beat until you have a bubbly consistency. Take one of your dough balls and roll it around in the egg and water mixture. Roll it again in your almonds or walnuts to coat the dough. Place the nut covered dough onto a cookie sheet and then into the oven.
4. Bake the kiss cookies for 10 to 12 minutes until they appear a light brown color all over. Place a Hershey's kiss into the center of each dough ball as soon as you remove it from the oven. The dough should rise up a bit around the kiss cookie.
5. Let cookies cool for one minute before placing them onto a wire cooling rack. Set aside three hours to allow the chocolate to fully harden into the cookie.