gooey butter cookies

How is it mid-January already??

As usual, I've come out on the other side of my long, amazing, thank-you-independently-owned-newspapers 12-day winter vacation by way of a reluctant crawl. Rather than hitting the new year in full stride, it always takes me about two weeks of returning to regular work hours to resume a guise of normalcy in my life — you know, the one where I don't watch two episodes of "Gossip Girl" a day and spend the rest of the time eyeing my new, 1056-page copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything with a mix of longing and fear.

Really.

So, in the spirit of easing back into real life, I offer you gooey butter cookies. They are pillowy soft just out of the oven, and remain so in the following days. (Normally, it would not take days to polish off a batch of cookies, but take note: This recipe yielded something like 60-plus cookies. And, no, you don't want to halve it. I promise.) The best word I can use to describe the cookies is comforting. Subtly laced with vanilla, just slightly tangy from the cream cheese ... This recipe is really special.


Gooey Butter Cookies


recipe very slightly adapted from Lottie + Doof, via Mathew Rice of Nightwood restaurant


4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 pound cream cheese
2 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped
3 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
confectioner's sugar for rolling

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a very large bowl, use an electric mixer to cream together the cream cheese, butter, vanilla bean seeds and sugar until fluffy. Mix in the eggs and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and stir in by hand. Chill for at least 30 minutes.

Scoop dough into roughly 1-inch balls and roll in the confectioner's sugar until thickly covered. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, a couple of inches apart. Bake at 325 degrees until they are cracked and puff slightly, about 12-16 minutes — they will be really soft in the center, but they should not brown. (These consistently took 16 minutes in my oven.) Cool to room temperature.

Because they're so soft, it's best to refrigerate the cookies while on the baking sheet; that makes them easier to pick up. (I left the trays out in our freezing-cold mudroom for a half hour or so.) It's recommended to serve these cookies straight from the fridge, and I agree that they're really great cold (but I also liked them at room temp).

Store in the fridge for up to a week.