I can scarcely believe this myself, but I actually made peanut butter blossoms on Sunday! All by myself! From scratch. And I had to use a mixer! A real mixer, with moving pieces that could have potentially hurt me!

But they didn’t hurt me — everything went beautifully. They even artfully “cracked” the way they were supposed to when I pulled them from the oven. I did have a few terrifying moments of, “Oh my God, am I going to splatter dough all over myself?!” but those passed.

The recipe I used is here, and I’ll gently recap . . .

As with most cooking, I’m sure, I had to gather together my ingredients before I could start anything. I read and re-read the recipe a few times to make sure I had everything within grasp, then set about getting everything together. The peanut butter and shortening had to be combined first and, in a moment of sheer terror, I actually took out the hand mixer and held it for a few seconds in my hand. While I gathered the courage to turn that baby on, I set about unwrapping all of my Hershey kisses — hot cocoa flavor! And I may have stolen a few . . .

And made a mess in the process . . .

Once I felt confident enough to tackle the mixer and my peanut butter/shortening combo, I took a deep breath and went for it. Everything blended together pretty easily and I didn’t sully my borrowed apron!

I mixed in the remaining wet ingredients — including brown and white sugar and vanilla extract — and, somehow, this all began to blend into something vaguely resembling dough. Adding in the flour, salt and baking soda and it really liked like dough. I was already feeling proud of myself!

I recruited my sister to help me roll up our peanut butter mixture into one-inch balls, then rolled them around in a bowl of sugar; that was probably my favorite part of the experience. Kate suggested we do sugar shots when we were finished, but I passed — for now.

Once they were all rolled up and onto an ungreased baking sheet (two, actually — this made a ton of cookies!), the blossoms had to bake for about eight minutes. We could smell them after only five, so I watched them like a hawk! And rescued them just as a few were starting to brown a little too much around the edges.

After the sheets come out of the oven, the kisses have to go right into the center of the cookies. As the recipe warned me, they did “crack” — but that’s part of what gives them such a cool appearance! The chocolate started to melt immediately, and I carefully transferred them to separate plates to cool down. Our cooling racks were MIA.

And then we just had to be patient! It wasn’t easy to do with the lovely peanut buttery aroma wafting all over the kitchen and living room . . . but I set about cleaning up the massive mess I’d made until they were ready. An entire sink-full of dishes later, I couldn’t take it anymore! And yes, they were quite delicious. I feel ridiculously excited that I pulled this off!