There are three foods I need to eat when I'm in Los Angeles: the New York Breakfast Sandwich from Joan's on Third, the fennel sausage pizza from Pizzeria Mozza, and the oreo cookie from MILK. Except that I can no longer eat the oreo cookie from MILK, because MILK decided to make a painful metaphor out of one of the major truths in life: nothing lasts forever. 

I am not exaggerating when I say that the MILK oreo was a beacon for me at the most tender times in my life. When I was a practicing lawyer working on a hundred-page evidentiary motion, pulling all nighters and getting scared when the cleaners came through the office with vacuums at midnight, I knew I could find refuge in that soft cookie and salty-sweet cream filling. And when I moved to Miami and became a mother, the MILK oreo became even more meaningful to me, as both a bastion of home and a celebration of the fact that, with breastfeeding and all the activity surrounding child-rearing, I finally felt free from the compulsion to diet. (A happy time period during which I regularly dropped pounds the morning after washing down a full platter of Cheesecake Factory Cajun Chicken Littles with a giant mug of Stone IPA, followed by my beloved oreo). Later, during my divorce, I would bring bags of MILK oreos back to Miami, put them in the freezer, and savor one a night--pretending I had waited in that line on Beverly Boulevard, that I still lived close enough to walk to the bakery in the dying light--until they were all gone and, with them, my Proustian nostalgia tummy party. 

So when, on a seemingly normal but ultimately fateful day last year, the kid behind the counter told me--fresh from LAX, my first stop MILK, eager for my fix--that they had recently decided to discontinue the oreo, I took it very hard. I might have even cried. Whatever I did, I remember the kid looking at me funny. He probably had the secret recipe, so he wasn't sweating it.

But why? WHY did they stop making my precious, precious oreo? This is the kicker: it was too hard to make. Too fussy. Too vulnerable to destruction. Too delicate. Too much trouble all around. 

Attractive, delicious, vulnerable, troublesome? I'd be honored to find those words on my tombstone. 

And so it was that I set out to reproduce the MILK oreo: cousin and compatriot of the feted Thomas Keller Oreo (TKO), but with a softer cookie and an even more generous helping of my favorite sweet-enhancer, salt. In many ways, MILK's decision to discontinue this cookie was the emotional impetus behind my starting this blog. For if I could not be home, and if home couldn't even retain all its essential elements in my absence, at least I could recreate it here, in Miami Beach, where I remain in exile for at least the next 14 years.*

So the stakes were pretty high.

*I.e., until Declan turns 18. Another happy divorce truth! Have a child in a city? You ain't going nowhere.

Oreos a la MILK (adapted from Serious Eats)

The night before...

Prepare the filling:
4 oz/125g 35% white chocolate (I used Scharffenberger)
1/2 oz salted butter (I used Plugra)
1/2c + 1 tsp (125g) heavy cream

1. Using a double boiler (or a saucepan over a bigger saucepan filled with steaming water), melt chocolate and butter together, stirring constantly. Meanwhile, bring cream to just under a simmer (over medium heat until barely bubbling at the edges, approximately 5-7 minutes).

2. Pour cream over melted chocolate and whisk to combine. Pour into a container and refrigerate for at least four hours or up to one day, until completely chilled. I chilled it until the next day because I like my filling like I like my men--cold and initially evasive. 

Now, before you sit down and cue up your Netflix, you must also prepare the dough for your chocolate shortbread cookies:

1 3/4 c + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour (always King Arthur!)
1 c + 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (I used the Fresh Market brand, but Guittard also rules)
3/8 tbsp baking soda
8 oz (227g) salted butter (Alfresco Farms this time)
2 tsp kosher salt
3/4 c + 1 tbsp granulated sugar

1. Place butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Turn to medium-low speed and mix until smooth; I used mostly medium speed and I allowed it to mix for about three minutes. Add the salt and mix for another 90 seconds, scraping sides of blow occasionally. Add sugar and mix for another two minutes, until fluffy. Scrape down that bowl!

2. Add dry ingredients in two additions, mixing on low speed for 15-30 seconds each time, until just combined. The point is not to overmix, so if your dough hasn't come together sufficiently at this point, take it out of the bowl and combine it by hand. 

3. Form dough into two giant dough mounds that look like comedic fodder for a 12-year-old-boy, wrapping each one in two layers of plastic wrap. Place in the refrigerator and turn on that Netflix because you're done for the night.

The Next Day . . .

Preheat your oven to 325 and line two baking sheets with silpats or parchment. Then remove one lump of dough from the refrigerator, reread The Untethered Soul, and hold on to your fucking hats because here is where the universe gets you on your knees. We're talking hero's journey, guardian-at-the-gate kind of shit. Will you want to turn back? Oh, hell yes. Will you succumb? No way. You made all that dough and filling last night! You're pot committed.  

Here the recipe calls for you to bang on the dough from all directions with a rolling pin "to prevent cracking." What kind of cracking? Obviously the kind that has you in the fetal position questioning your desire to even exist--because the first thwack of my rolling pin glanced right off that chocolate meteorite and landed squarely on my thumb. I spent the next few minutes icing my hand and ugly-crying. 

For some reason, my dough was impossible to work with cold. I consulted with my brother, who reported the opposite--his dough had been too soft and delicate. Well, mine was like a fucking piece of the Berlin wall, and about as easy to dismantle. My procedure became to flour my hands and maniacally manhandle each piece of dough until it was warm enough to manipulate, then roll it out, press it with my hands, and perform minor patching procedures until it was ready for cutting. Then I cut the "dough" with a 2-inch biscuit cutter from Williams-Sonoma and baked it for 16-18 minutes, turning once. 

The baking part didn't go badly. Nothing burned and I was pretty vigilant with the timers. "Bake until fragrant with tiny cracks on the surface," quoth the instructions. Mine were pretty much all crack (insert tasteless joke) given the texture of the dough going in, but I think I figured out how to assess their done-ness nonetheless. Like the definition of pornography, you'll know it when you see it. 

Cool the baking sheets on racks for five minutes, then cool the cookies themselves on the racks. They cool quickly.

The final step is actually fun. Throw the filling into a stand mixer with the paddle attachment and fluff it up until it looks like whipped marshmallow. Then, using a pastry bag or--for most of us--a plastic bag with the tip cut off, pipe concentric circles of filling onto the middle of a cookie starting about a half inch in. (Actually, you can pipe the filling in any shape or pattern you like, as one smart-ass Serious Eats commenter pointed out. And he or she is absolutely right; you're just pressing the cookies together. The shape of your filling is between you, the chocolate sandwich cookies, and your God.) 

Finally, press another cookie onto the filling and voila! Twenty-four hours and an existential crisis later, you have yourself some ridiculously delicious (albeit homely in high resolution) oreos. 

A few final tips:
- With respect to the moon-rock crumbly horrible mess-up cookies you'll inevitably generate, you can crumble them up and sprinkle over vanilla or (swoon) butter pecan ice cream for a delicious homemade sundae topping.

- Refrigerated cookies keep for about 2-3 days; frozen, they'll last you at least a month, perhaps more if your constitution is strong. Before you want to enjoy one, just remove it from the fridge or freezer and leave it on the counter for an hour. 

Difficulty level: 11, on a scale of 1 to 10--for the way it tests your very mettle as a human.