Softbatch Cookie Butter Cookies

Christmas week. The house is decorated, which in the Hensley household means Connie put up a tree and lights and stockings and I put up a wreath on the door and called it a contribution. Connie's decorating style is "more is more" — the tree is full, the mantel is covered, there are snowmen on every flat surface. My decorating style is "structural integrity first, aesthetics second," which means the wreath is level and securely fastened and that's the extent of my involvement.

I want to talk about Christmas baking, because I've been baking all week. Not Betty's level — I can't match her output or her quality — but I'm trying. I made three things: Betty's sorghum cookies, my bourbon balls, and sugar cookies for Clay's request (Clay is sixteen and still asks for sugar cookies with icing, which I find endearing and will never admit to finding endearing).

Betty's sorghum cookies: cream together half cup of butter, half cup of sugar, and half cup of sorghum molasses. Add one egg, beaten. Sift together two and a half cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking soda, one teaspoon each of cinnamon and ginger, half teaspoon of cloves, a pinch of salt. Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Roll into balls, roll the balls in sugar, and bake at 350 for ten to twelve minutes. They spread into soft, chewy cookies with crinkled tops and a warm spice flavor that's deeply, specifically Appalachian. Sorghum makes them darker and more complex than regular molasses cookies. They taste like December in Evarts, which tastes like cold air and wood smoke and a kitchen where the oven hasn't been off in three days.

Bourbon balls: I know these are a Kentucky thing, not specifically an Appalachian thing, but they're mine and I'm claiming them. Crush a box of vanilla wafers into fine crumbs. Mix with a cup of powdered sugar, two tablespoons of cocoa powder, a cup of finely chopped pecans, three tablespoons of corn syrup, and a quarter cup of bourbon — the good bourbon, not the cooking bourbon, because there's no such thing as cooking bourbon, there's bourbon and there's bourbon you haven't drunk yet. Roll the mixture into one-inch balls. Roll the balls in powdered sugar. Let them sit overnight. The bourbon mellows. The flavors fuse. You eat three and then you eat three more and then you realize you're slightly buzzed from cookies, which is the Christmas spirit in its purest form.

Amber is home for winter break. She arrived Friday with two suitcases of laundry and a nursing textbook the size of a cinder block. Travis and Jolene are coming Christmas Day. Clay is home, obviously, eating cookies as fast as I can make them. The house is full again — full of noise and mess and laundry and the particular chaos that only children home from somewhere else can generate. Connie is in her element. She manages the chaos with the precision of an air traffic controller and the warmth of a woman who missed her people.

I'm going to try to make Betty's stack cake for Christmas this year. I made it in August for Amber's nursing acceptance and it was good. Christmas stack cake needs to be better than good. Christmas stack cake needs to be Betty's. I've got the dried apples. I've got the molasses. I've got the cast iron. I've got five days. That's enough time if I don't lose my nerve, and I won't lose my nerve because Craig Hensley has been underground and lived, and if you can survive a mine collapse, you can make a cake. Probably. We'll see.

While I’m building up nerve for Betty’s stack cake and Clay’s eating cookies faster than I can cool them, I needed something easy enough to make in a full house with a distracted mind — something that felt like the holidays without demanding my whole attention. These Softbatch Cookie Butter Cookies were exactly that. Cookie butter’s got that warm spice that smells like Christmas already happened, and with Clay underfoot and Connie running logistics, I needed a recipe I could pull off between interruptions.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 11 min | Total Time: 26 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup cookie butter (Biscoff or speculoos spread)
1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for rolling
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Mix dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ginger until evenly combined. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat softened butter, cookie butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar with a hand or stand mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes. Don’t rush this step — the texture of the finished cookie depends on it.
Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in eggs one at a time, then mix in vanilla extract until fully incorporated.
Combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low speed just until a soft dough forms. Do not overmix.
Portion and roll. Scoop dough into 1 1/2-inch balls (about 1 heaping tablespoon each). Roll each ball in granulated sugar and place 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets.
Bake. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are just set and the centers still look slightly underdone. They will firm up as they cool. Pull them early if you want soft — overbaking is the enemy of the softbatch.
Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They’ll keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week — if they last that long.

Nutrition (per serving)

Softbatch Cookie Butter Cookies — One More Cookie for the Tin