[Cookie 091] Sesame Seed Cookies

Hello folks, I'd like to introduce you to someone. This is Marjorie. She is my hero/tailor.

I am forcing her to be my friend.

And obviously, my first step towards achieving this goal was to make her cookies. Specifically, these Sesame Seed Cookies.

Okay, I think I should do some 'splaining. First off, I am taking a Projects in Photography class this semester, and it focuses primarily on portrait photography. Which is pretty rad, in my opinion, since I never get around to actually shooting posed portraits and I have really wanted to give it a try. For our most recent assignment we had to pick a Ghanaian that we were relatively chummy with (or not--just depends on how confident you are with potentially awkward situations) and photograph this subject over an 8-12 hour block of time. So, I chose Marjorie, who is the go-to seamstress for most of the students in my program. She always came off like somewhat of an enigma to me, in part because of her no bullshit attitude and somewhat stony countenance. Plus, she can sew a pretty 1960s cocktail dress in about 6 minutes, from raw fabric to ironed lapels.

So I set up a date to come in and shoot some pictures of her, and in preparation I make a batch of these Sesame Seed Cookies (mainly to get on her good side before I would proceed to bug the hell out of her with my camera). Another example of how baking cookies has helped me where my social skills are lacking! I hand her the tupperware containing the cookies, and she takes a bite, and says "You did good" and then continues her cutting and measuring. I felt like I was in a detective movie and had just returned to my boss with a particularly juicy bit of info, and the P.I. gruffly patted me on the shoulder and told me "Ya did good, kid." Yay!

Anyway, I shot a million pictures, only got a few that I like, and none that I love. Oh well, c'est la vie. At least the cookies were a hit, and that's what I should be talking about anyway! So I'll hop to it.

These cookies are really good. You must excuse their appearance, because once again my crazy oven situation messed them up pretty badly. But the dough is delicious and the flavor of the actual baked cookie is pretty awesome. The sesames get all toasty and pack a bunch of flavor as well as crunch. I would most definitely make these again, because not only are they easy to make, but they are unusual, so you can impress your friends (and friend-crushes) without breaking a sweat.

Sesame Seed Cookies

Makes about 4 dozen

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup hulled sesame seeds, toasted

Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line four baking sheets with parchment paper, and set aside. Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda, and set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, and beat until combined. Add reserved flour mixture, and beat until combined. Add toasted sesame seeds, and beat until incorporated.

Using a spoon, drop cookie batter, about 1 tablespoon at a time, onto prepared baking sheets, allowing at least 2 inches between cookies for spreading.

Bake until golden, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from oven, and cool on a wire rack.

****

{End Results}
Baking Difficultly: 1/5
Ingredient Accessibility: 4/5
Tastiness: 4/5
Attractiveness: 3/5
Is it worth it?: Yes! Especially those of you who are fans of sesame flavor...you know who you are.

{Pairings}

Drink: No drink. Nothing.

Song: Side with the Seeds -- Wilco
Activity: These would be good served at a nice little tea party or to give as a gift. See above anecdote.

Favorite Cookie [081-090]

Another round come and gone. Actually, it's the 9th round, and 9 is my lucky number, so I would have to say that I'm a little disappointed that this set of ten cookies weren't better. These were my summer cookies, so I really have no excuse for not going all out! We had some really nice ones, that's for sure, but nothing that really blew my socks off. Is that even an expression? Blowing socks off? What?

Anyway, it's definitely going to be a rough 10th round, that's for SURE SURE. This whole gas oven with no temperature gauge is killing me! I am literally baking completely blindly. Oh, and there is a nation-wide gas shortage, so that also doesn't really help me out. And to top it off, I don't have a cookie sheet, so I've been using a roasting pan. Aaaaand, I only have a 1-cup measure and 1/2-cup measure. No teaspoon measures. Yep. And the butter they sell here is sold by the 200g block, with no tablespoon/cup measurements on it, and I have no scale. Sooooooooooo…yeah.

But let's cut the crap and get on with it. Here's the 9th round, in all its mediocre glory!

1st place (Blue Ribbon!): Maple-Pecan Shortbread

Alright, these were really nice. Besides the fact that they are very easy to make look nice (you just cut out a perfect circle of dough with a cookie cutter and squish a pecan onto it! simple!), the cookies have a surprisingly deep flavor--even if you don't add the maple extract, like I didn't. The maple syrup lends enough rich flavor alone, and the toasted pecans in the dough work fantastic with it. Highly recommend this one!

2nd place (Honorable Mention!): Wholemeal Almond Biscuits

These also have a really nice flavor that's a little unexpected. The cookie itself is a lot like a Hobnob (OMAHGAH HAVE YOU HAD THESE?!!? LOVE), but a lot less sweet. In fact, they are hardly sweet at all, but have a great cinnamon undertone, along with the toasty almond flavor of the biscuit. Great for tea, or really any fancy, fruity dessert. Pile on the clotted cream plz.

3rd place: Almond Horns

So almondy, so good. And they are majorly adorable, right? Am I the only one that gets all warm and fuzzy inside when she sees an adorable cookie? Is it bad that I look at cute cookies like normal people look at cute puppies?

4th place: ANZAC Biscuits

Okay, I ranked these highly because they basically introduced me to the nectar of the gods: Lyle's Golden Syrup. Holy shit, I can't even begin to tell you how many cans of this I'm bringing back to the US--customs or not! As for the cookie itself, I could eat the dough for hours/years/eternity.

5th place: Oatmeal Bars with Dates and Walnuts

I was partial to these because I really love whole-wheaty, nutty, oatsy, hippie-dippie snacks, and these really fit the bill. But I have to say, they are more like a cake than bar, and hardly could be considered a cookie…just sayin', Martha.

6th place: Spiced Almond Wafers

These definitely look very elegant and nice, but they didn't end up being as flavorful and spicy as the uncooked dough was. They tasted a little boring and bland once baked, but they are fun to make, so that's a plus.

7th place: Fig Bars

These took a lot of work. Yep. Making the fig filling is fun and it is very aromatic and delicious, but for some reason once the cookie is all assembled and baked, the fig filling isn't all that special tasting anymore. The assembly of the bars (ie. the rolling of dough, spreading of filling, and sandwiching of the two layers of dough) is a little tricky and tedious. They're good, but not worth all the effort.

8th place: Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies

These taste exactly like you'd expect, and I think that the only reason Martha made the recipe "GIANT" was because the dough itself isn't all that special. The use of vegetable shortening does, however, lend a pleasantly different taste and texture to the cookie. You could add stuff to this recipe and easily spice it up, if you're interested. Add white chocolate chips, dip the bottoms in ganache, somehow incorporate peanut butter...

9th place: Baci di Dama

Ugh, what a serious pain in the ass. "Piping" the filling onto these little poops was a disaster, since the filling absolutely didn't hold its own and spilled all over the place. And the cookies, once I managed to actually get them to set and solidify, were hard and chewy and not so fab. Meh.

10th place (Brown Ribbon!): Chocolate-Ginger Leaves and Acorns

BOOOOOORRRRRRIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG.

Alright, great. Got those done and behind me, and I'm ready for the new! But maybe that's just the Rosh Hashanah speaking. To all of you enjoying the first signs of autumn, I am whole-heartedly jealous of you. Eat lots of pumpkin and spice for me, because right now I'm looking at nothing but pineapples and plantains for another 3 straight months. Until my next post, soon...

[Cookie 090] ANZAC Biscuits

Damn, the big 9-0. So close to one hundred. But more importantly, this cookie should be acknowledged as the very first cookie I baked here in Ghana! And the very first cookie I ever baked using a gas oven! So many milestones, so many feats! I exaggerate, yes, but still I think the fact that I was able to produce mildly edible cookies using an oven that has no temperature knob and is essentially just a sealed box with a blazing fire inside of it deserves a little pat on the back. Well, when I say mildly edible I mean that the first batch I made I burned the hell out of the bottoms of (it was only thanks to my friend Ayden's nose that we realized something was going wrong in the kitchen), and the second batch baked for way too long and got overcooked and hard, though beautifully golden brown. But the cookie itself, let me just say, YES.

ANZAC Biscuits I suppose were a funny first choice cookie to make during my stay here in Africa, considering that they are a cookie that got its name from the Australian New Zealand Army Corps during WWI. Apparently, they were a popular cookie to mail to soldiers, and I can see why since they are pretty sturdy and probably won't taste bad after a few days (though mine didn't last that long). They have oats, coconut, and Lyle's Golden Syrup in them--the latter two were readily available at my local supermarket, and for a cheap price too. And let me just say: Lyle's Golden Syrup. Holy shit. This is the stuff that God drinks, I swear to you. Oh mah gaaaaaaah! I want to put this on everything I eat, from now on. Done.

The other ingredients, like flour and butter, were super expensive at the market here because I couldn't find any that weren't imported. Oh well, I guess I'll make do somehow. At least the baking soda is in the cutest container EVER!

Anyway, the recipe is pretty simple and requires that you melt your butter with the Lyle's Golden Syrup, so you don't have to set your butter out on the counter an hour early to soften up! Whipping up the dough is easy peasy, and perfect if you don't have an electric mixer on hand. Then you just scoop out balls of dough with your cookie scoop, if you have one. If not, you just roll balls of dough between your hands, and make sure to pack them tightly so that the cookie doesn't fall apart too much.

(Oh and by the way, check out the mega-kitchen that we have in my dorm here! That's only half of it, too! We have 3 oven/stoves, but only 1 has gas! I feel like I'm on a cooking show...or not at all) The next step, or actually the step before all the dough-making actually, should be to preheat your oven. Yeah no big deal, whatever, just turn the knob to 350º. Okay, I know I'm a totally newbie to this whole gas oven thing--BUT WHAT THE HELL?! You have to literally aim a flaming match underneath the bottom of your oven and pray to god that it catches fire?! And then you can't really adjust the flame (at least on ours you can't)?! And we don't have an oven thermometer yet! Blind baking!! Ahhh!! So of course, the first batch we decide that it's fine to stick our cookie sheet/roasting pan on the lowest rack, so it burns the cookies' tushies to a blackened crisp and leaves their tummies all doughy and undercooked. Then, thinking we had outsmarted the oven, we raise the sheet to the top level and the cookies bake for almost twice as long and looked perfect, but were so cooked through that they hardened up into rocks. Siiiiigh. At least it was a learning experience. Next time, the middle rack should be just right--the third bowl of porridge, if you're into metaphors or some shit.

So, these cookies are pretty delicious and easy and great and you should make them if you have a sane-person's oven. But hey, gas ovens ain't so bad. They get hot in like 3 seconds and...yeah, that's it. Okay, I'm over it! No one said it would be easy cooking on an entirely different continent, worlds away. Imma make this happen! Go go go! Welcome to a new semester of cookie baking--Awkwaaba.

ANZAC Biscuits

Makes about 3 dozen

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups rolled oats

2 cups sugar

1 cup desiccated coconut

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

2 tablespoons Lyles Golden Syrup

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 cup boiling water

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper, and set aside. In a large bowl, combine flour, oats, sugar, and coconut. Set aside.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt butter with syrup. Dissolve baking soda in boiling water, and add to butter mixture. Stir to combine. (Be careful; if the butter is hot, it will bubble up considerably.)

Add butter mixture to dry ingredients, and stir to combine. Using a 1 1/2-inch ice-cream scoop, drop onto prepared baking sheets, about 2 inches apart (be sure to pack the scoop tightly so the mixture doesn't crumble). Flatten cookies slightly with the heel of your hand.

Bake until golden brown and firm but not hard, about 15 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool.

****

{End Results}
Baking Difficultly: 1/5
Ingredient Accessibility: 2.5/5 (Depends on where you live, I guess)
Tastiness: 4/5
Attractiveness: 2/5
Is it worth it?: Yes! Oh man, and the dough...I could eat it for. ev. er.

{Pairings}

Drink: These would be good with milk, or nothing at all.

Song: How Hard -- James Apollo
Activity: Mastering the art of gas oven baking in a third world country!

[Cookie 089] Spiced Almond Wafers

Hey there. I'm still in Ghana. Very much so. It's really starting to set in that I'll be living here for 3.5 more months, which is so strange, but also pretty awesome! You know what goes down after my classes?? Everyone goes to this awesome cafe (if I can even call it that) that is essentially just a few tables and plastic chairs set on the side of the quiet road leading to the NYU Academic Center, and we all get a Star beer (Ghanaian!) and chill out. Uh, YES. Yeah yeah, I can hear my mom and dad groaning all the way across the Atlantic ocean; "Lizzie, do you even do any work there?! What are we paying for!?" Well, I do do work, thank you very much--it's just that Ghanaians really know how to relax. When in Rome/Accra…

Anyway, this is a cookie blog, and not a travel blog! I haven't yet made any cookies here yet, but this weekend it is SO happening, I promise. It has somehow spread around amongst the other students here that I bake cookies often, which is a bad sign because I think there might be a hype that I can't live up to! The pressure!! Anyway, there are a couple recipes that call for ingredients that are super pricy in the states--like Lyle's Golden Syrup--which are very cheap here, but other things are really expensive here, like chocolate. Basically anything imported has a huge price tag, even for American standards, which makes things a little difficult. Nah, actually, I'll just treat grocery shopping like a treasure hunt or something. Eventually I'll find all the cheap flour and sugar! Do you know they have COCONUT FLOUR here?! Awesome!! How do I use it/what do I use it in??

Okay, well this post is actually about another old cookie recipe that I baked right before I flew off to this other side of the globe. Spiced Almond Wafers! Thin, crisp, and spicy--and pretty too. The dough, surprisingly, tasted more spicy before it was baked, which is pretty odd since usually the flavors get enhanced after baking, and after having a day to set in. These cookies ended up tasting nice, but nothing shockingly flavorful or anything. I also wished they were a little thinner, like the pictures, but maybe I just didn't slice the dough thin enough. Oh hey! Idea! Maybe you could use a cooking mandolin to slice the dough evenly! Would that work??

The recipe itself, however, is a little more interesting than most of her recipes. Whipping up the dough is the same as usual, but once you've made it you stick it into some mini bread loaf tins so that the dough freezes into a brick shape. I didn't have any mini loaf pans, so I just used regular sized ones and didn't fill them up bigger than I wanted the dimensions of the cookies to be.

Once you freeze the dough for a while, you slice off cookies and decorate them with almond slices. It can get a little tedious, but if you've got some jams playin' it shouldn't take you too long. And the end result is pretty dang adorable, and I can't deny an adorable cookie. Some people can't deny adorable children--I can! But an adorable cookie, that's another matter.

As you can see, the cookie travels well and is perfect for picnics too! A good snacking cookie, nothing all that heavy or dense, so you can bring them to a party and people won't complain that you're trying to fatten them up (a problem, I must admit, I have encountered a couple of times).

So, in conclusion, these cookies are cute and people will like the way they look and most will like the way they taste. They will probably fall in the middle of my rankings of best cookies, but they ain't bad!

Ciao puppies

xx

Spiced Almond Wafers

Makes about 6 dozen (it's true!!)

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 cups packed dark-brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 cup sliced blanched almonds

Directions

Line 2 mini loaf pans with plastic wrap.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat butter and sugar with a mixer on medium speed for 4 minutes. Reduce speed to low. Add eggs and spices. Beat in flour mixture in 3 additions.

Press cookie dough into pans, and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Freeze for 1 1/2 hours (or up to 1 month).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Remove dough from 1 pan. Let soften slightly. Cut eight 1/8-inch-thick slices with a sharp knife. Cover remaining dough, and freeze in pan until ready to slice and bake.

Place slices 1 1/2 inches apart on a cookie sheet lined with a nonstick baking mat. Top each with 2 to 3 almond slices. Freeze until firm, 5 minutes. Bake until dark golden brown, 10 minutes. Let cool on sheet on a wire rack. Repeat.

****

{End Results}
Baking Difficultly: 3.5/5
Ingredient Accessibility: 4/5
Tastiness: 3/5
Attractiveness: 4/5
Is it worth it?: Yeah sure, why not

{Pairings}

Drink: Aw, a nice light wine, if you wanna get fancy romantic.

Song: Skinny Love -- Bon Iver
Activity: A picnic, complete with cherries, a baguette, and kettle corn. And that wine. Trust me when I say that can't be beat...

[Cookie 088] Wholemeal Almond Biscuits

HELLO! Wo ho te sen? I am writing from Accra, Ghana right this instant! I can't believe I've only been here 1 week, because it feels like 1 month. The past week was more than hectic, being that it was orientation week, so we didn't have a moment to breathe. I've gone to lectures, learned a little bit of Twi (the language spoken here), gone shopping (I've only just begun...), watched some traditional African drumming and dancing, went to an afrobeat concert, went to the beach, seen the local universities, and just had my first class (African Philosophical Thought) today. It's hot and humid, but not too bad. And the food...

The food.

Is so.

Good.

I think I can get used to this. Jollof rice, yum yum, banku, yum yum, fufu (haven't had it yet, but I can't wait), and plantains!! And get this: they sell shots of alcohol in packets like ketchup. Uh, yes. I got some/a lot. Cane Spirit! Coffee-flavored Whiskey! Gin! Haven't tried that coffee or cane stuff yet, but you just wait. I'll report back. Oh, and listen to this great idea that one of my esteemed colleagues came up with: buy a coconut on the street, pour a packet of gin into the coconut water, and then stick in a straw and DONE. After-school special. Ah, yes, I could so get used to this.

One thing that will make this whole blog thing a little difficult is the fact that the internet connection here is hardly adequate. Whatever--I'll do something else, like READ. Whoa. Or maybe draw. I think it will be good for me, build character. I'm too dependent on this computer here. Maybe I'll start basket weaving, which I'm going to be learning in one of my art classes (!!!!).

This huge culture shock and overwhelming week of change makes writing this post a little weird. Thinking about these cookies, and what I was doing during the time I made them, seems like eons (and miles) ago. I'd usually try to make my initial anecdote somehow relate to the cookie in question, but I don't think I can do it this time. These Wholemeal Almond Biscuits just don't scream Ghana at all. Well, they are sort of like Hobnobs, which are these amazing cookies that probably aren't from Ghana only, but still--SO good. But more than that, to me they scream English tea time, so maybe you could make the whole British colonization connection, but I really don't feel like getting into that....at all.

So let's just talk straight about these cookies. They are very subtle in flavor, not sweet at all really. They do have a really nice cinnamon undertone, though, along with the flavor of almonds and whole wheat flavor, which I really loved. Their name is a really accurate description of what kind of cookie you get--a biscuit, wheaty and nutty. They are hearty and great with tea, or maybe with a bit of whipped cream/clotted cream and some berries for a fancy tea-time treat.

Once again, the recipe has you make your own almond meal, and this time I actually did that instead of substituting store bought almond meal. Good choice! The recipe worked perfectly and the toasted almonds gave a great flavor to the dough. If you want, you could probably add nutmeg or some other spice, but I thought the cinnamon was just perfect.

Okay, so a great tea cookie. I think I can make a feeble connection to Ghana with this one: THEY DON'T DRINK REAL COFFEE HERE. Or at least, I've had trouble ordering anything other than Nescafe instant coffee. This makes me majorly sad. I bought some ground coffee that's made in Togo, which is awesome in theory, but doesn't taste really that great. But I'm a bit of a snob about coffee, so don't listen to me.

Aaanyway, I think that's all I've got to say about these. You should make them. Serve them with iced tea, since it's way too hot to think about boiling water in the northern hemisphere. Or hey, you could maybe make ice cream sandwiches with these--might get a bit messy though.

I actually ate mine with a cup of Tazo Honeybush tea and a small cup of cold Tapioca pudding that my dad made the night before, and it was a perfect afternoon dessert (new meal! new meal!). The tapioca might have been a little heavy to have with an already heavy cookie, but the Honeybush tea was just right--nice and light, but with a strong enough floral flavor to really be quite refreshing.

Okay, I'm going to go now. I have class soon. Aight. Bye bye. Until next time (soon I hope!)

Wholemeal Almond Biscuits

Ingredients

1 cup blanched whole almonds, toasted

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface

1/3 cup packed light-brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces

2 tablespoons ice water, plus more if needed

Directions

Pulse almonds in a food processor until coarsely ground. Add flours, sugar, salt, and cinnamon, and pulse to combine. Add butter, and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. With machine running, pour in enough water until dough just starts to come together on the sides of the bowl. Shape dough into a ball, and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate until cold and slightly firm, no longer than 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out dough on a lightly floured work surface to an 11-inch round just more than 1/4 inch thick. Cut out 3-inch circles. Carefully gather scraps of dough, reroll, and cut out remaining biscuits. Space 1 1/2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake cookies until edges are golden brown, about 30 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 5 days.

****

{End Results}
Baking Difficultly: 2/5
Ingredient Accessibility: 4/5
Tastiness: 4/5
Attractiveness: 3/5
Is it worth it?: Yes!

{Pairings}

Drink: Tazo Honeybush tea, or any other Rooibos/Redbush tea

Song: That's Where It's At -- Sam Cookie (!)
Activity: Afternoon tea, whatever country you live in. I think that activity should really transcend geography and country borders. Teatime for all!