There’s a specific kind of nostalgia tied to the individually wrapped oatmeal cream pies that showed up in lunchboxes for decades, and I wanted to see if I could actually beat the original instead of just recreating it. Turns out you can, by a wide margin, once you’re working with real butter, fresh spices, and…

If you grew up eating brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts straight out of the toaster, you already know exactly the flavor these cookies are chasing. I wanted something that captured that same warm, molasses-y cinnamon sweetness, but in cookie form, soft and thick, with an actual pocket of that brown sugar filling running through the middle…