Stop reading now if you’re on some crazy New Year cleanse or avoiding carbs, sugar, fat and all things fun. Just stop reading because the next sentence is going to tempt you. I’ve come across one of the best cookies I’ve ever made or eaten in all my 32 years. Please meet the Gooey Butter Cookie.

I am a cookie dough girl. I love tracing my tongue along the beaters, scraping my finger across the spoon and pinching off little morsels from oddly shaped unbaked cookies. I remember eating more refrigerated English Bay cookie dough than English Bay cookies as a teenager. The next person to open the tub would come upon finger tracks that revealed many a chocolate chip, but not enough dough to surround it. Pure, unadorned dough of sugar, fat, flour and eggs is all I wanted. No nuts or chips or raisins or whatever. I love the dough. And that is what these cookies taste like. Dough dough dough.

But they’re fully cooked, of course, and the high amount of butter and sugar means they are reminiscent of shortbread. But then the cream cheese gives a toothsomeness that shortbread never has. Oh, and then there’s the vanilla seeds and the vanilla extract that add both a heavenly perfume and flavour. And how could I forget that you’re to eat them cold? Yes, cold. Just like cookie dough from the fridge. As I’ve suggested before, cold cookies are a thrill worth seeking out.

I am sorry that I had to share these with you post-holidays. As I made them only two days before Christmas, there would have been little time for you to shop for and make them—because you really must shop for and make them—and then whoooooosh, January. It’s the time to work off other people’s cookies so that you can now try these.

Gooey Butter Cookies
adapted from Lottie + Doof

I got about two dozen of the size shown and another dozen and a half wee ones.

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
250 g cream cheese
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 vanilla bean, scraped
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Icing sugar for rolling and dusting

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.  With your hands, with a hand-held mixer or in the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the cream cheese, butter, vanilla bean seeds, and sugar together until fluffy.  Add the egg and vanilla extract.

Incorporate the flour mixture.  Chill for at least 30 minutes.  Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Half fill a small bowl with icing sugar. When the dough is chilled enough to be formed, scoop balls that are about 1-2 tablespoons (I used a cookie scoop over an inch in diameter) and toss in the icing sugar.  Place on a baking sheet, lined with parchment, a couple of inches apart.  Bake until they spread and puff slightly, about 12-16 minutes.  (In my oven they were ready at 12 minutes.) They will be really soft in the center.  If they start to brown, they’ve gone too far.  Cool to room temperature.

It is suggested that at this point you can refrigerate them on the tray because as the cream cheese and butter get cold, they’re easier to pick up. It is a good tip.  These cookies are best served straight out of the fridge.

These will keep for up to a week in the fridge or can be frozen for longer (and then thawed in fridge).

My mom threw birthday parties on a budget like have never been thrown before. Being a summer baby, the backyard was often transformed in the month of August into whatever had been dreamed up for the big birthday event. Rolls of newsprint turned into water colour painting stations along the fence, paper across the garage door transformed into an old fashioned fishing game with prizes, water stations, sand stations, family friends dressed as hippy love clowns, and an old refrigerator box decorated, cut, and transformed into a puppet stage to name a few. These were just the beginnings of what would develop into my love a throwing a great party.

Over the years I have planned more than a few elaborate parties from a James Bond scavenger hunt that culminated at the shooting range, to a white trash birthday party that involved fake tattoos, po’ boy sandwiches, and karaoke at the Rosslyn Hotel. And this year the party was a backyard drive-in movie screening of The Breakfast Club that included dressing up as the characters, Captain Crunch, ham and cheese, sushi, and pixie sticks. We endured the humid post-rain mist in the backyard as the weather did not cooperate, and enjoyed the athlete, the princess, the brain, the criminal, and the basket case just the same. With John Hughes’ tragic and coincidental passing less than a week after the party, it was a fitting tribute. I “fake bobbed” my red locks, put on my biggest fake diamond studs, brown skirt, pink top, knee high boots, and fancied myself the red head heroine of my youth, Miss Molly Ringwald…aka “the princess” Claire.

With “Breakfast Club informed treats”, and mandatory truffle popcorn on the menu, the only big decision left to make was the birthday confection. Despite the yawn factor of cupcakes shops on every corner, I have in years gone by established a bit of a cupcake queen reputation. My usual recipes are one of two…NYC’s Magnolia Bakery’s Traditional Vanilla Birthday Cake with Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting or Ina Garten’s Coconut Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.

With a desire to try something new, I tracked down a highly rated recipe that covered cream cheese frosting, citrus notes, rich carrot cake, chocolate and coconut requirements. All the elements of the perfect “old man dessert” standards that I love best… Carrot Coconut Cupcakes with White Chocolate Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting!

The cakes were moist and tender, and the creamy frosting, though bordering on a glaze with my addition of a teaspoon of lemon juice and an extra cup of icing sugar, set well in the fridge and was delicious and delicate. A sugary maraschino cherry on top for the brain “Brian Johnson” who is NOT a cherry, and may or may not have motioned to Claire, was the perfect addition. After all, love is in the details.