Cinnamon Swirl Cookies

First full week of summer and the heat has settled in like it owns the place. Ninety-two degrees on Tuesday. Ninety-four on Thursday. The kind of heat that makes you understand why Southerners invented sweet tea and front porches and the entire concept of sitting still. Earl and I sat on the back porch in the evening with the ceiling fan going and glasses of tea so sweet your teeth ache just looking at them, and we watched the fireflies come out over the marsh. If you've never seen fireflies over a Georgia marsh at dusk, you have not yet seen everything this world has to offer.

I started the summer meal program at the community center on Tuesday. Free lunch for any child who shows up, no questions asked. I'm volunteering three days a week — Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The kitchen is smaller than Hodge's and the equipment is from approximately 1987, but I've cooked in worse. The first day we served sixty-three kids. The little quiet girl from school was there. She came in, saw me, and I swear her shoulders dropped three inches in relief. I gave her a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and a carton of milk and she sat in the corner like she always does, but this time she ate slower. Not like she was afraid the food would disappear. Like she knew it would be there.

Kayla is home for the summer and she's working at the Piggly Wiggly to save money for tuition, which breaks my heart because that girl should be studying, not scanning groceries. But she says she needs to contribute and I understand that because I was working at the shrimp plant at her age, peeling shrimp until my fingers bled, so who am I to tell her not to work? I just make sure she eats a real dinner every night. She comes home at seven, kicks off her shoes, and sits at the kitchen table while I fix her a plate. We talk. She tells me about the customers — the nice ones, the rude ones, the one who tried to use a coupon from 1998. I tell her about the community center and the kids. We sit in that kitchen and we talk and it feels like the most important thing in the world, because it is.

I made peach cobbler this week. Now, it's early for peaches in Georgia — the good ones don't come until late June, July — but I found some at the farmers market that were decent, and decent Georgia peaches are still better than perfect peaches from anywhere else. I make my cobbler the old way: butter in the baking dish, batter poured in, fruit on top, and the batter rises up around the peaches like it's holding them. Cinnamon, nutmeg, a little vanilla. Serve it warm with vanilla ice cream. Gladys says her cobbler is better. Gladys is wrong. The entire congregation at First African knows she is wrong. Nobody tells her because we are Christian people and also because she would never let us hear the end of it.

Earl ate a bowl and said, "This is why I married you." I said, "You married me because I was the only woman who'd have you." He said, "That too." Forty years of marriage in two sentences.

Now go on and feed somebody.

The cobbler I made this week is already gone — Earl saw to that — but cinnamon has a way of lingering in a kitchen like a good memory, and I wasn’t ready to let it go. These Cinnamon Swirl Cookies came next, because after a week of feeding sixty-three children at the community center and watching Kayla come home bone-tired from the Piggly Wiggly, I wanted something I could press into a hand and say “here, take this with you.” Cookies travel. Cookies keep. And cinnamon, as any Georgia cook will tell you, belongs in nearly everything worth making.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 32 min (plus 1 hour chilling) | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (for filling)
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Instructions

Make the dough. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy, about 2–3 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until well combined. Gradually mix in the flour mixture until a soft dough forms.
Make the cinnamon filling. In a small bowl, combine the 2 tablespoons softened butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix until it forms a spreadable paste.
Roll and fill. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll into a rectangle roughly 10 by 12 inches and about 1/4 inch thick. Spread the cinnamon filling evenly over the dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border along one long edge.
Form the log. Starting from the long edge closest to you, roll the dough tightly into a log, pinching the seam to seal. Wrap the log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or overnight.
Preheat and slice. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Remove the chilled log from the refrigerator and slice into rounds about 1/2 inch thick. Place the rounds 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.
Bake. Bake for 11–13 minutes, until the edges are just set and the bottoms are lightly golden. The centers may look slightly underdone — that’s correct. They firm up as they cool.
Cool and serve. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cinnamon Swirl Cookies — The Spice That Shows Up in Everything Worth Eating