peanut butter & jelly cookies

Sometimes, I think a recipe just chooses you.

After more than three years of posting recipes on this site, sometimes it feels like I've made all the dishes I could possibly think of wanting. This happens in particular with desserts (maybe because they're my favorite thing to cook), and especially when I find myself trying to brainstorm ways to come up with a cookie that I haven't already posted.

Because there's something so lovely about cookies. They're probably the first thing you remember baking, no? Whether they were from scratch with your mom or from a mix at your friend's house, for most people, cookies are the first taste of baking they get.

But I think partly because of that, cookies can sometimes seem unsophisticated. If you could make them at nine years old, can they really be enough of a challenge to, say, serve at a party? You'll notice they're almost never on restaurant menus. That's because cookies are a basic, and sometimes basics feel like the lazy choice.

So when I was thinking about new, exciting cookie recipes, I thought of one of my favorite flavor combinations: peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter cookies are beyond easy -- the kind of recipe a nine-year-old could happily master. But this sweet, smooth jelly filling adds so much to these cookies beyond just the basics -- they're interesting, new, and totally delicious.

Peanut Butter & Jelly Cookies

INGREDIENTS

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup confectioners sugar

1 egg

Pinch of salt

1/3 cup grape jelly

1/3 cup confectioners sugar

1 tbsp heavy cream

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine peanut butter, 1 cup confectioners sugar, salt and and egg, and drop by teaspoonfuls on cookie sheet. Bake for 8 minutes. Let cool.

Whisk together the grape jelly, 1/3 cup confectioners sugar and heavy cream until the consistency is even (use an electric mixer if you have one -- this takes some time).

Place a spoonful of jelly mixture in between two peanut butter cookies, and press together. Repeat to create sandwich cookies for all the remaining cookies.