the magic in the middle

from our childhood between my sisters and i there is a, let's say...legend. a legend about cookies. according to the sources that be [me, maggie, and sara] there was a night that someone ate 13 cookies in one sitting. that person may have been me, and i may have been about 9 years old. i know that they may have been rainbow chip cookies, the best of the keebler realm if you ask me. (i always ate around the m&ms and saved them for last.)

but the legend sometimes says they were magic middles.

what is a magic middle you ask?

well let me tell you.

they were the actual best cookie from the keebler realm, but have not been in production for most of my life.

the magic middle is a cookie that looks plain and boring from the outside. but just when your are expecting a dry crummy cookie, you bite into it and there is a deliciously fudgy middle.

the best way to eat these in my opinion was to nibble around the edge until you have eaten to the center. then twist the top and bottom apart and enjoy them fudge side down one at a time.

mmm. they were good.

a few weeks ago maggs and i were reminiscing about childhood and either the 13 cookie legend came up or the magic middles. one leading to the other.

i mildly forgot about this until i ran across an article about foods that are no more and there were the magic middles.

over the years, we have talked about how to make them on our own, but never succeeded.

then this article told me the secret that we had forgotten. they are shortbread cookies. not regular cookie. shortbread.

so that was that.

i looked up aunt betty's (aka betty crocker) shortbread recipe, which was a simple 3 ingredients (way less complicated than any i found online) and found some chocolate to put in the middle and started baking.

i tried 3 different chocolate option. hershey, which was not a success. dark chocolate chips, which was ok, and nutella, which worked well at first but didnt work that well after a few days.

although the chocolate options have not been the perfect option yet, i think we are very close to the re-creation. and this makes my taste buds so very happy.