Your Best Chocolate & Spice

It doesn't take much: coconut milk, Thai chilis, galangal, lemongrass, peanut butter, sugar, lime, and chocolate. Aren't those tiny molds in the lower right adorable?

Chop the lemongrass into two-inch segments.

Amanda used her meat pounder -- probably the most widely adaptable tool in her kitchen! -- to bruise the lemongrass and release its juices.

What a flavor base: Thai chilis, galangal, and lime zest join the bruised lemongrass.

Along with the sugar, it all gets stirred into a pot of coconut milk to simmer and infuse.

Press down on those solids -- you want every last bit of flavor!

The peanut butter goes straight into the cooled and strained coconut milk. Good things are happening.

It doesn't look like much yet, but keep whisking...

...And you'll get this: perfectly creamy and just thick enough to hold its shape.

The filling gets poured into a piping bag, which we'll come back to later.

Meanwhile, Amanda chops up a veritable mountain's worth of chocolate.

The shards and slivers get placed into a microwave-safe bowl for melting.

It's a good idea to melt chocolate slowly to prevent scorching. Almost there!

That's more like it.

Amanda takes on a deep look of concentration as she uses a pastry brush to paint a layer of chocolate inside the candy cups.

Not too thick, not too thin.

Once the chocolate has cooled and hardened, she uses the pastry bag to pipe a spiral of filling into each cup.

A spoonful of chocolate seals in the peanut butter goodness.

Voila! Peanut butter cups with a flavorful secret inside.

Ancho, chipotle, cayenne, salt, cocoa powder, egg, cream, vanilla, butter, peanut butter, black pepper. 

First things first. Puree chipotles. Marvel at their vibrant color. Ooo la la. 

Warm the cream, and whip it up with a little creamy peanut butter, those pureed chipotles and salt. Doesn't sound very cookie-ish yet, does it?

Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it chill at least a few hours or even over night. You know, enough time for a good nap, or a full night's sleep. 

Instead of napping, you could opt make the cookie part now. If so, drop your softened butter into the bowl of a mixer. 

Cream. 

Assemble the dry ingredients - cocoa powder and sugar and LOTS of cayenne, ancho chili and black pepper. Fantastically firey and not for the faint of heart. 

This is why you must always sift cocoa powder: sneaky cocoa nubbins! 

Ahh, that's better. Thank you sifter for helping us transform the naughty cocoa into a cookie-friendly powdery dust! 

Combine and mix. 

Let there be dough! 

Roll the dough into chocolatey rolls. 

And wrap up the roll for a little chill time in the fridge. 

It comes out just so sliceable! 

Chilled & chili-ed polka dots of chocolate. 

After a quick bake in the oven, it is at last time to apply the creamy PB filling. Like so. 

And to bask in their adorableness. 

You can eat a few, too. There are plenty of these lovelies to go around.