A soft and chewy spice cookie studded with white chips and creamy cookie butter in the middle. Cardamom, Cinnamon, Ginger and Cloves!

This is an original Cookie Butter Cookie Recipe that I created for Barns & Noble. It won a place in their Cookie Bake-Off Cook Book back in 2015.

Right around that time is when the Biscoff type cookie butter spread became popular. I have to admit I was addicted to it for a while and snacked on it by the spoonfuls. I never "spread" it on anything.

Nonetheless, I wanted to develop a Cookie Butter Cookie recipe that had a warm puddle of spicy sweet cookie butter in the middle of the cookie-the best part!

My idea for the cookie came from a musical I had seen with some of my family called, "Church Basement Ladies 2, A Second Helping."

I enjoyed that musical immensely and one of the songs had the lyrics, "She'd teach me this song as she stood by the stove, it goes cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and clove." So that is what I put in the cookie.

In the musical, the woman was sharing the memories of being with her mother in the kitchen. I have this book now as a memento for me and my own daughters.

Original recipe from the cookbook. All ingredients are the same as the recipe in the recipe card.

"The Top 75 Recipes From Around The Country is out and I'm so tickled to have my recipe for Holiday Cookie Butter Cookies appear in the book. Page 29. What an honor to have my creation selected from over 4,000 entries. I will be at the Topeka Barns & Noble store promoting the book and offering some tasty samples this Sunday, Oct. 18th at 2pm. Stop by and get your copy!-This blog post was originally published Oct. 2015

Spoonful of cookie butter in front of jar.

To me, it's like the flavor of a gingersnap cookie and a graham cracker combined into one, and the texture of creamy peanut butter or nutella.

It is spiced shortbread cookies that are finely ground into a powder and mixed with ingredients like sugar, oil, and sometimes additional spices. The mixture is processed until it reaches a smooth, spreadable consistency. The spread has a rich, caramelized flavor with hints of spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

The publishers of the book changed the name on my recipe to "Gingerbread Cookie Butter Spread" but it has many names. At the time, there weren't as many brands available as there are now. I made this with a really fabulous brand called Zöet which is a speculoos cookie butter. I use my Kroger store brand now. Some other names are Lotus Biscoff Spread, which is modeled after the Biscoff cookies themselves. But wait...

While many internet search results say that cookie butter was the result of one particular person who made it famous on a tv show, there is evidence to the contrary. Let's give credit where credit is due, to a food blogger's mother.

"The idea is generally attributed to Oma Wapsie, pseudonym of the Dutch Rita, who placed the recipe on her website, a food blog in 2002. The idea spread widely in part to a Belgian TV inventor show, called De Bedenkers ("The Inventors")."

However, it's really been around for a long time. The origin of cookie butter can be traced back to Belgium and the Netherlands, where speculoos cookies have been popular for many years. In the early 20th century, Belgian bakers started using leftover speculoos cookies to make a spreadable version that we now call, "Cookie Butter."

Whenever I start digging into the history of a product, I should just get out my vintage can opener. EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it if you're interested. Cookie Butter Patent Wars.

Throw all of this in the grocery cart

butter, shortening, flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, egg, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, brown sugar, cookie butter, white chips.

Ingredients Notes:

This looks like a lot of ingredients doesn't it? Groceries were not so expensive back in 2015 when I wrote this recipe. With the cost of things these days, I want to let you know you can make a really fabulous cookie butter cookie and reduce some of the ingredients if you are on a budget.

For the Butter and Shortening: You could use all butter or all shortening. This would save about $5 dollars. I would venture to say margarine would work too, but I haven't tried it. These cookies have a chewy texture. More butter would mean crisper texture.

I prefer to use both in my cookies because I love the texture of the combination. My most popular cookie recipe on the blog that has both is Natural Peanut Butter Cookies.

For the white chips: You could eliminate them.

For the Spices: You could use only cinnamon and one of the spices or you could substitute Apple Pie Spice or Pumpkin Pie Spice which has a combination of some of these spices.

The Cookie Butter: My store brand Kroger is great and yours probably is too.

Directions Preview

If you would like to see this recipe in action, check out my one-minute video preview.

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Should I make these cookies small or large?

This recipe was written as Giant Jumbo cookies because that was what they wanted for the contest -to sell a new cookie at the Cafe in Barns & Noble.

I like smaller cookies and so if you want them large, just follow the steps in the photo of the book.

If you want them to be regular sized, use the recipe card located at the bottom of this post.

I hope you love this cookie as much as we do!

Lanie

Best Cookie Butter Cookies

Spiced Gingerbread Cookie, Studded with White Chips and a Creamy Cookie Butter Center.

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Prep Time: 1

Author: Lanie Smith

Equipment

1 baking sheet
1 parchment paper or baking mat
1 cookie scoop

Ingredients

½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
⅓ cup butter flavored Crisco
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ cup dark brown sugar packed
1 egg
½ teaspoon fine sea salt or regular table salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
1 ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup creamy cookie butter spread, stirred well
¾ cup white chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and shortening until smooth, about one minute.
Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, egg, salt, and baking soda.
Continue mixing for 30 seconds on low speed. Add the cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and cloves. Mix on low speed until combined.
With a large spoon, slowly add in the flour and mix until well incorporated. The dough will be thick.
Wrap the dough in a plastic log shape and chill for 20 minutes.
Line baking sheets with parchment paper or baking mats.
Scoop and roll the dough into 2 Tablespoon sized balls. Place on the baking sheets 3 inches apart.
Indent the centers of each ball and press down with the tip of a teaspoon ¾ of the way down. Place ½ teaspoon of cookie butter into each center.
Insert about 4-5 white chips around the edges of the cookie with the pointy side of the chip into the dough.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown around the edges.
Let the cookies cool completely on the sheet.

Video

Notes

Let cool completely before removing from the sheet. Store in an airtight container.

Best Cookie Butter Cookies Recipe