Sometimes you have a dream that becomes a reality. Sometimes you have a dream that doesn’t. And sometimes you have a dream about a cookie stuffed with frosting that goes into the oven and does not remain stuffed with frosting, but instead becomes the gooiest, most delicious cookie swirled with frosting that you could never have even dreamed up. This is the story about the best cookie I’ve possibly ever made.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been posting less on the blog, less on Instagram, and sharing less in general. Really good creative content can only blossom when it has time to grow, and I decided that I really wanted to take time to focus on the quality of my posts and spend less time posting, hash-tagging, and generally just killing myself to get a blog post done.

Instead of posting all of the time, I’ve been spending more time experimenting, which I do actually share quite a bit of over on my Instagram stories. Raw, unedited, and untested, I videotape my trials and failures with you. I made an entire cake on Instagram stories, only to decide the frosting really was not going to work for the cake. I also shared a set of videos explaining the birth of these cookies.

I envisioned a classic peanut butter cookie, soft in texture, filled with a warm center of chocolate buttercream frosting. OMG can you see it in your head!? I made up balls of frosting (three separate recipes, might I add – including canned frosting which I despise but wanted to test to see if a shortcut could be achieve… spoiler: it did not work) refrigerated them, and then wrapped them in a slightly altered recipe of peanut butter cookie dough from the Betty Crocker Cookbook (yes, the 1970’s edition). Nice little (actually quite large) balls of dough went into the oven with their frosting surprise inside. What came out of the oven was frosting exploding and pouring out of every cookie.

Frosting had slightly caramelized on the tops, and the cookies had to be left on the baking sheet for quite a few minutes before I could attempt to move them to the cooling rack. Even after cooling, the cookies were tender and a bit fragile, but the taste was undeniably magical. Something between a brownie, a cookie, fudge, and a Reese’s cup: these cookies were no joke. Even though they didn’t turn out as planned, they were probably better for it. Since the cookie dough was slightly under-baked (YES) and the frosting had mixed in with it, they became really chewy and so fudgy.

I swapped the shortening that the cookie recipe called for for more butter to get rid of some of the crunch, which I do like but wasn’t feeling for these guys, and it was definitely the right decision. Like I stated above, I also tried three types of frosting with these cookies to find the best consistency. Store bought frosting was a disaster since it doesn’t have butter in it, so it stuck to the pan and hardened to a crisp. Both types of chocolate buttercream frosting were delicious, but the one I have listed below was simpler to make and didn’t ooze out so much, making it the better option all around.

If you’ve been waiting for a reason to try a recipe from me, please try this one. These were initially made for a coworker who helped me on something, and another coworker literally ate every single one before he could get back to his desk. He stated, “I’m not proud of what I did, but they were the best cookies I’ve ever had.” I was mad, to say the least, but also couldn’t help but smile when I heard that. Just another reason to make another batch!