Apricot Butterscotch Peanut Butter Filled Sandwich Cookies

Week 499, and the apples arriving, the squash at the farm stand, the light turning golden, the kitchen shifting to soups and stews. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.

Purim hamantaschen; Marvin eats half; the half is everything. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.

I made hamantaschen this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.

I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.

Hamantaschen are what I made this week, but what I keep thinking about is the apricot—that particular sweetness, the way it holds its shape inside the pastry and does not disappear, which is the thing you want from a filling, and the thing you want from a week. These apricot butterscotch peanut butter filled sandwich cookies are not hamantaschen, but they are cousins: a shell, a filling, a reason to bring something to someone’s hands. Marvin ate half. The half was everything. These are for the other half—for the next visit, the next container, the next two o’clock.

Prep Time: 25 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 37 min | Servings: 24 sandwich cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup butterscotch chips
For the filling:
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup apricot jam or preserves
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Mix dry ingredients. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat softened butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in vanilla.
Combine and fold. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, stirring until just combined. Fold in butterscotch chips.
Portion and bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart. Flatten each slightly with the back of a spoon. Bake 10–12 minutes, until edges are golden but centers look just set. Cool on the pan 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Make the filling. Beat together peanut butter, apricot jam, powdered sugar, and softened butter until smooth and spreadable. Taste and adjust sweetness.
Assemble sandwiches. Spread a generous layer of filling on the flat side of one cooled cookie. Press a second cookie, flat side down, firmly on top. Repeat with remaining cookies and filling.
Set and serve. Allow sandwiches to rest 15 minutes before serving so the filling firms slightly. Store in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days, or refrigerate up to 1 week.

Nutrition (per serving)

Apricot Butterscotch Peanut Butter Filled Sandwich Cookies — The Filling Is the Point