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Last night I made the best cookies ever. I also almost died from smoke inhalation because *someone* spilled all this crap in the bottom of the oven and when I was pre-heating the oven it caught on fire and the house filled with smoke. I could barely walk through the kitchen it was so bad. But I opened the back door (a bad idea since we have this stray cat who thinks he lives here-- I had to chase him out of the house when I found him in the laundry room later that night), turned on the fan, scraped all the crap out, waited for the rest of the crap to burn off (which took way too long) and commenced with the cookie-making.

The cookies were so fucking awesome that I'm going to share my recipe with you:

Ada's Cinnamon & Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
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Dough:
3 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature!)
1 2/3 c sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
3 c flour
couple big shakes of cinnamon

Topping:
1/4 c sugar
1/4 c unsweetned cocoa
big shake of cinnamon
3/4 bag mixed chocolate and peanut butter chips, chopped up pretty small

To make the dough: Mix the butter, sugar and salt in an electric mixer, or with beaters (or by hand if you're a poor bastard) until well creamed (heh heh). Scrape down bowl and beat in egg and vanilla and mix until well incorporated. Add cinnamon. With mixer on low, beat in flour 1 cup at a time (if you were using beaters you'll probably have to mix the flour in by hand, because the dough gets quite stiff-- or buy a Kitchen Aid mixer! Damn I love that thing), stopping to scrape side of bowl after each addition.

Now the dough should be stiff but not sticky at all, so it's easy to handle. Gather it into a ball and put it on a cutting board (don't worry about flouring it, it won't stick). Divide dough into two balls and shape each into a long skinny log (make a circle with your thumb and middle finger-- it should be about that big around. I know that seems small, but just do it, okay?). Wrap each log tightly in plastic wrap and freeze for about 20 minutes, or until pretty hard.

Now make the topping: mix all the topping incredients, and pour out on a plate with a bit of a rim, or a big shallow bowl. That's it.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and line two baking pans with something (foil or parchment).

Take your dough out of the freezer and slice into about 24 rounds per log. Cookie recipes always claim you'll get 4 dozen cookies when you really get 2 dozen-- but this one actually does make that many. Don't be tempted to leave your logs all fat and make big cookies-- they'll spread out a little and if you make them too big they won't cook evenly. They're good little, anyway.

Now press each round into the topping mixture, trying to pick up as much as you can (and get a good mix of the chocolate chips and the sugar), and arrange them on the baking sheets. You should be able to get all the cookies onto two baking sheets-- they can be pretty close together, they only spread out a little. When you're done, take the leftover topping and distribute it on top of the cookies so each one is nice and covered.

Then bake for about 25 minutes, or until they JUST start to get golden, switching the positions of the baking sheets halfway, so they cook evenly. They'll be soft and still pretty light colored when you take them out but that's okay. Let them sit for about 10 minutes, then transfer them carefully to racks to cool. The end. You're welcome.

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As promised the other day, here is a picture from my friend's wedding last weekend-- guess which one is me!