The Only Newsletter I Care About This Week
Self-Care is: Refrigerator Storage Bins
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
Smitten Kitchen
(My notes in red)
INGREDIENTS
Filling
2/3 cup (170 grams) creamy peanut butter
2/3 cup (80 grams) powdered sugar
Two pinches of flaky seas salt
Cookie
1/2 cup (115 grams or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature for a mixer, cold is fine for food processor
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar, plus more to coat cookies
1/2 cup (95 grams) dark brown sugar
1/4 cup (65 grams) creamy peanut butter
1 large egg
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
2/3 cup (55 grams) dutched cocoa powder (see note)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine sea or table salt
INSTRUCTIONS
Heat oven: To 375 degrees F.
Make filling: Line a small tray or plate with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, mix peanut butter, powdered sugar, and salt with a fork; it’s a little messy but it will come together. Once evenly mixed, use a teaspoon measure to scoop heaped teaspoons of filling into little balls. Spread them out on prepared tray or plate. Once you’ve used all the filling, put the tray in the freezer while you make the cookie portion.
Make cookie with a hand or stand mixer: Beat softened butter with peanut butter and sugars until creamed together. Add vanilla, egg, and salt, and beat until combined. Sift in baking powder and cocoa, beat to combine, then add flour and mix until flour disappears.
Make cookie in a food processor: Pulse flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt, and sugars in food processor until mixed. Cut cold butter (if using, softened works fine here too) into chunks and add to bowl. Run machine until fully blended. Add peanut butter, egg, and vanilla and run machine until it is blended, scraping sides down as needed, and then keep running until dough balls together.
Assemble cookies: Place 1 to 2 tablespoons extra granulated sugar in a small bowl. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Take a scoop of cookie dough that’s just shy of 2 tablespoons (a #40 scoop holds 1.75 tablespoons and is perfect for this) and place it in the palm of your hand. Flatten it with your fingers. Take a peanut butter filling from the freezer and place it in the center, and wrap the chocolate dough around, rolling it in your palms until smooth. Roll it in the granulated sugar to coat, place it on your prepared baking sheet and gently flatten the cookie, just slightly, with your fingers. Repeat with remaining dough.
Bake cookies: For 8 to 10 minutes. This is going to seem like really little time, and the cookies are definitely going to look underbaked, but remember that we are just baking a thin outer shell of a cookie (the center doesn’t need to be baked), and this does not take long. Let cookies rest and set up on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack to cool.
Store: At room temperature in an airtight container.
I logged into Mailchimp for the first time in a WHILE today (5/11) to see if anything came up if I made the time to stare at a blank page. Nothing quite yet, but I did find this draft from Valentines Day. I vaguely remember deciding not to send it as I feared we were getting dangerously close to a toxic level of one sided vulnerability. Chernobyl comes to mind. A nuclear explosion with unsuspecting, blameless victims forced to live with the radiation of my wide open emotions. And me, the government, being like "IT'S FINE!" ... but anyway, I'm sending it now. Emotions, like radioactive matter, are less caustic over time.Â
Valentine's Day and a very dry heat wave... does God hate me?
This week has been inexplicably great. Why? Unclear! I could not tell you. The things I've done to fill my time this week look INCREDIBLY similar to the things I've done to fill my time for the last 1,000 weeks. Fascinating to me that with these same core ingredients, each week yields wildly differing emotional results. Perplexing. Concerning? Crazy-making! To discuss in therapy.Â
Okay, let's get to the meat:Â
Few things in this life make me feel as reckless as Valentine's day. Historically, I spend Valentine's day alone. The use of the word 'historically' here is a gentle way of saying I've never ever once been the clearly expressed Valentine of an emotionally/sexually/verbally/physically available male human.
Again: Perplexing. Concerning? Crazy-making! To discuss in therapy.
Silver lining! This allows me a lot of room to let my freak flag fly on Valentine's. And boy, have I! Like Lady Gaga, I approach each year with a brand new personality. So when it comes to past Valentine's Days, I have found myself in all stages of grief and joy.
Flat on my damn back, silent tears into the void, Edith Piaf playing for dramatic effect
Full toothed smiling on a sunset walk alone around Balboa Island, surrounded by couples asking them to take their photo, regretting NOTHING about my own singleness
Over the top celebrations of Chosen Family vibes with Galentine's dinners
Pick Me energy
I've never been happier energy
Ignore it energy
Embrace it energy
One year, I was fullllly convinced that a boy (WHO DID NOT KNOW MY NAME IN MY WRITING CLASS) was going to reveal his love to me
One year, I got flowers from my dad at my corporate job* (The same job where I had spent the last 3 years working to convince my toxic boss that my parents did not pay my rent. Something he refused to believe and would consistently bring up in my yearly review / conversations re: compensation. Eek.)
We've seen it all, folks. Emotions range wildly and there is no predicting what will come to the surface on February 14. Regrettably, I have literally zero control over the situation. What can I say? I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint, I DO NOT FEEL ASHAMED!
She takes a left turn.
Being single is hard. It's not impossible. And it's probably just as hard as being in a relationship (pause before answering). But it's all I know. So, from this writer's perspective, relationship status, or lacketherof, is a tricky corner of the puzzle that requires... tweaking.
As far as definitive decisions or hammers brought down on what may or may not be in the future, there is no black or white. To say "This is what is and what shall remain! Me! A single woman!" is not what I'm looking to proclaim (as nice, and releasing as that does sound). On the other end, waking up on any given morning and decidedly making changes in that department, magically turning a solo act into a duo as rabbit pulled out of the hat is equally improbable. There is no general rule or hard decision to be made by one person at a table built for two.Â
So we find ourselves at "character building" moments like Valentine's Day (commonly seen alongside Wedding Dance Floors, saving for retirement, the entire concept of Babies and most major fall/winter holidays).
A few options here:Â
1. Complain and be sad. VALID. Not against it. Have been there. Will be there again. Take the L and drink the tequila.Â
2. Recognize the strength it's taken and the growth you've made in another year of life on the trail. Iron on a new patch and drink the tequila.Â
I do wonder if at times, has the badge of honor and pride I take in the life of a single woman, doing her very best and making it happen as well as one could toughened my skin to the idea of love? Not completely. But probably more than I'd like to admit. The very suggestion of this concept in my mind sends therapy (my third mention) chills down my spine and I'm having visions of emphatic nodding from all the people in my life who know me well enough to see this truth. My defense: what's the alternative? The optimism of love and vulnerability is exhausting! And it really hurts! If you've found a way to balance the two realities, my inbox is O-P-E-N.
*Dad, thank you for the flowers. They were nice.Â