Serene Sandwich Cookies

Maybe. Spicy peanut butter cookies filled with miso dulce de leche will summon your most peaceful self.

Try: Serene Sandwich Cookies

300 g ap flour
3/4 tsp bs
Salt to taste
230 g room temp butter
300 g light brown sugar
1 c chunky pb
2 eggs
2 t vanilla
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp Sichuan pepper

You are reading about a winter storm trekking its way up the coast. You are ensconced in your bed looking at pictures of people buying shovels, at crowds of passengers delayed at Penn Station. You are soothed by the certainty that it will snow. It’s 8 pm on Friday night and you’ve turned down plans to go to a “cool
birthday in Chinatown.” You have successfully vanquished your desire to be witnessed and admired and, instead, have decided to satisfy your hermetic impulses for an entire weekend.

Three hours ago you put a can of sweetened condensed milk on the stove, covering it with water gently and checking on it
every thirty minutes to make sure that it remained comfortably submerged.

Now you are lying in bed with all of the lights off. Brooklyn is quiet, the way it only gets during extreme snow. You are wearing a nightgown that is inappropriate given the conditions and the ineffectual heating in your apartment. There is a full glass of
water next to your bed and a cat curled at your feet. In the morning you will sleep later than you have in weeks. You will look at pictures of serene, blanketed streets on the front page of the Times, you will open your can of condensed milk and it
will have metamorphosed into the silkiest Dulce de Leche you’ve encountered.
You will stir in miso to taste.
You will decide to make spicy peanut butter cookies to go along with it.
You won’t really follow any particular recipe, you will cream together butter, sugar, and peanut butter, and add in all the other ingredients.
You will let the dough chill while you drink your coffee and then will roll it out.
You will not have a melt down when the first batch emerges burnt. You will recognize this as a minor inconvenience and will make another round because you have nowhere else to be.
By the bed, the window rattles gently like a sound machine and sleep comes quickly.

recipe