Almond Butter Cookies

I used to be a pretty horrible cook, but I'm proud to announce that through careful effort I've grown into a blazingly mediocre cook. Back when I was truly contemptible, I received a peanut butter version of this cookie recipe from a friend. After making the recipe, I found the cookies dry, crumbly, and requiring large quantities of milk to push them down my esophagus. Of course, there's no way of knowing if the disastrous results were the recipe's fault or mine.

George, an excellent cookie concocter, never had this problem. First he created a pretty delicious peanut butter cookie recipe that I enjoyed. Then he took his mastery to the next level by substituting peanut butter with its moister, subtle sibling: almond butter.

But he wasn't satisfied with just a great-tasting cookie, oh no. He took great care in forming the dough into perfect rounds. First he put a portion of the dough on a piece of wax paper and rolled it into a cylinder 1 1/2 – 2 inches in diameter. He froze the dough like that, and when he was ready to make cookies, he unwrapped the wax paper and sliced the dough into 1/4 – 3/8 inch thick rounds.

At this point he pressed a whole pecan into the center of each round. The pecans were just a shade darker than the actual cookie dough. To make sure the rounds cooked into perfect shapes, he spaced the rounds an inch apart from each other on the baking sheet, and after rescuing them from the oven's fiery embrace, cooled them on a wire rack.

The result: beautiful, chewy cookies with a crunchy center (the pecan) and sophisticated flavor. Why don't you treat your guests to these cookies as well? They're so simple to make that it seems wasteful not to make them. I mean, how lazy can you get?

Almond Butter Cookies

1 Cup almond butter

1/2 Cup unsalted butter

3/8 Cup white sugar

3/8 Cup brown sugar

1 egg

3 Tablespoons plain soy milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 and 1/4 Cup unbleached all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Cream together almond butter, butter, and sugar.
3. Mix in egg, soy milk, and vanilla.
4. Mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Then mix all the ingredients together.
5. Make rounds as described above, or Alternatively, make golf-ball sized spheres of dough and press them down on the cookie sheet with a fork. Use either an ungreased baking sheet or a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
6. Bake for 8 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
7. Serve with a suggestive wink.