Dare I say...happy early Thanksgiving?

Also, the cookies I liked so much I made them twice this week

Hi friends! It is impossible for me to believe it, but Thanksgiving is in less than a week. This month has gone by so fast. I will not be making Thanksgiving dinner next week — I will be on vacation, but don’t worry, I’ll be eating lots of delicious food! But I did make these very Thanksgiving-y cookies this week, and I knew I had to share them with all of you. They are very warm and cozy and I advise making a batch this weekend and sticking a bunch of the balls of cookie dough in the freezer, and then whipping them out to bake sometime this week when you need something delicious to eat with a warm beverage. Or, even better, make two batches this weekend, like I did this week, and you can have some for now and some for later.

But I’ll get to the cookies in a moment. First I just want to thank you all so much for your lovely reception of Drunk on Love! I met so many of you this year, some for the By the Book tour and some for the Drunk on Love tour, and I loved meeting you all so very much. I really really missed getting to meet and talk to readers in 2020 and 2021, and I had such joyous conversations with all of you that made me so very happy.

I was so busy in October that I have at least three half written newsletters that I tried to write on airplanes and then fell asleep instead, so here are a few things I meant to tell you. I was on the Tamron Hall Show! (I met Whoopi Goldberg backstage, which was very cool). I read a bunch of great books, including True Biz, by Sara Novic, The Hero of This Book, by Elizabeth McCracken, and Agatha Christie, An Elusive Woman, by Lucy Worsley. (I’ve reread quite a few Agatha Christie novels over the past year or so, which made that biography of her extra fascinating.) I went to Canada, my first foreign country since 2019, and the first ever foreign country I’ve done a book event in, and it was awesome, thank you Toronto! Oh, that reminds me…

Okay, this is going to sound like an advertisement for Tide To Go pens, but I promise, it is not (though, Tide, if you’re reading — which you are not — I am really the perfect person for you to sponsor because I spill a lot, okay?). But after my Toronto event, I went out for noodles with the wonderful Ruby Lang and Farah Heron. Because it was after my event, I got spicy noodles, since I knew that I wasn’t going to wear that dress again on the tour, so if I got spicy noodles on it, it wasn’t the end of the world. I did indeed get spicy noodles on it, and so when I got back to my hotel that night, I pulled my Tide To Go pen out of my suitcase and dabbed whatever magic is in those things on the stains, making a note to remind myself to put more stain stuff on them when I got home before I washed the dress. BUT: when I got home, I took the dress out of my suitcase, and it was as if there had been no spicy oil stains on it at all! A true miracle product; I just bought three more yesterday. Buy these as stocking stuffers for everyone you know who travels a lot (or, even, who makes a lot of messes).

Also, since I’m talking about gift ideas, and we are coming to that time of the year, here are a few more:

An Ember mug — this is my magical coffee mug that keeps liquids at the exact temperature you want at all times, and I love mine so much and miss it desperately when I travel. Here is a code for $30 off the 10 ounce mugs: EARLY30. (This is also not an ad, nor is it a code I got from being an affiliate or whatever, I’m just on their email list so I’m sharing it with all of you). I am honestly tempted to buy a second one, especially since I wish I had one of the cool colors.

Noise canceling headphones: I don’t get on a plane without mine, which says a lot because they’re huge (I have over the ear ones, they work the best for me) and take up a ton of room, but they make flying so much calmer. I have Bose ones (that I got as a gift) and I love them, so see if they’re on sale this time of year. But any kind will help.

The Calm app: speaking of calmness! I’ve been using the paid version of this app every night for over six months now, and it really does help me so much. I have always been a person who has trouble falling asleep, and the sleep stories on the Calm app make it so much less stressful when I’m having a hard time sleeping, and they make it easier for me to fall asleep.

I’ll send more gift ideas in December! Quick side note: if you are still looking for a great vegetarian main dish for Thanksgiving (or for any big meal this time of year), I highly recommend this vegetarian shepherd’s pie. When I made it I couldn’t find the seitan and so didn’t use it, and I was making it for vegans so I used vegan cream cheese and earth balance butter in the potatoes, and everyone raved about it, even the omnivore skeptics.

One last thing before the cookies: sign up here to get texts from me about book events, exclusive giveaways, and other book news! I promise I will not text like a politician asking for money!

Okay, cookie time! I discovered this cookie recipe through Thida Bevington, who is one of my absolute favorite people I follow on Instagram. She posts pictures and stories about the delicious treats she bakes, the beautiful walks she goes on around her home in Norfolk, England, and the weekly trips she takes to London, and she’s a joy. She posted about these cookies from Displaced Housewife’s blog and they sounded like everything I like in a cookie, so I had to make them right away. I didn't have muscovado, so I made them the first time with turbinado sugar, which I had lots of, and they were great. But I really wanted to know what they were like with the muscovado, so when I saw it in the store yesterday, I bought some, came home, and made more cookie dough, and they were fantastic. If you have neither of those fancy sugars, you can just use dark brown sugar — they won’t be as rich and molasses-y as the muscovado version, but they’ll still be delicious. These cookies are not hard to make, but, fair warning, this is the kind of recipe where you have to stop and refrigerate the cookie dough for 30 minutes to an hour, and then you have to put the balls of dough in the freezer before baking them, but it’s worth it. And that’s what makes these great make ahead cookies, because you can have those balls of dough in your freezer all ready to bake whenever you need them.

Brown Butter Muscovado Snickerdoodles (Makes about 24)

Ingredients:

4 ounces (one stick) of unsalted butter
3/4 cup sunflower seed oil, canola oil, or any neutral vegetable oil
3/4 cup dark muscovado sugar, packed
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 3/4 cup bread flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt

To roll the cookies in:
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon cardamom

First, brown the butter: put the stick of butter in a small saucepan and melt over medium heat. Once the butter has melted turn the heat up, but just a little, and watch the butter closely — it’ll pop and crackle some, and you’ll start to see it turn darker, and then you’ll see golden bits on the bottom of the pan. Take it off the heat, pour it into a large bowl and let it cool until it’s warm, but no longer hot.

While the butter cools, whisk together the bread flour, the all purpose flour, the cream of tartar, the baking soda, and the kosher salt into a medium bowl. Once the butter is cool enough, add the oil, sugars, vanilla, and eggs to the browned butter, and whisk together. Make sure you break up the nuggets of packed muscovado sugar right away, it’s easier to do it now than later. Then, mix in the flour mixture to the butter mixture until just blended together.

Cover the bowl and stick it in the refrigerator for thirty minutes to an hour. While you wait, mix together the granulated sugar, cinnamon, and cardamom for the topping, and line your cookie sheets with parchment. Also, if your freezer won’t fit a cookie sheet on it, get parchment ready on a plate or smaller baking tin that will fit in the freezer.

Once the dough is ready, scoop balls of dough that are about 1 1/2 tablespoons each, roll the dough into balls, and then drop the balls of dough into the bowl with your sugar coating. Put the dough balls onto your lined cookie sheets or plates or pans, and stick them in the freezer for 15 to 30 minutes (or longer!). Once the dough is in the freezer, heat your oven to 375 degrees F.

When you’re ready to bake, make sure the balls of dough are spaced out about 2 inches apart on the parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake the cookies for 11-13 minutes, straight from the freezer. Enjoy!

Have a great weekend!

Jasmine