A Cookie a Day: Homemade Magic Middles

[Photograph: Sarah Jane Sanders]

Filled cookies are good but chocolate filled cookies are better. As a kid, I didn't discriminate: I loved the gooey caramel, the sticky jam, and the thick cream. But my cookie eating odyssey has led me back to an incontrovertible truth: magic middle cookies are the apex of the stuffed cookie genre.

The uniquely texture cookie—an improbably composite of chewy and crispy and buttery and pillowy—hides a melty chocolate fudge center, which I want more of because I can't see it. I'd eat the truffle-like filling by itself with it's slightly-gooey, yet not at all sticky texture (I say that like I haven't. I have). I'd bake the warm brown sugar and nutmeg-spiced cookies on their own. Combined? I'm in holiday cookie heaven.

And that's just to eat. We haven't discussed how fun they are to make, how you roll the soft sugar cookie dough around chilled pieces of chocolate truffle filling until they form a perfect little parcel. A parcel that's filled with the best gift there is, chocolate (duh). No, magic middle cookies won't surprise you with socks or stale tuiles like your great Aunt will. Magic middle cookies only give you a melting chocolate-y truffle center and pillowy soft, tender cookie.

On that thought, better make it a double batch.

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