Espelette pepper’s mild heat and subtle fruitiness make it an excellent companion to chocolate. Chefs in the Basque region of France tend to use it in chocolate mousse or layer cakes, but here I add it to an easy cocoa drop cookie, based on a recipe by Sally Sampson of Chop Chop magazine. Note that the butter and the eggs both need to be at room temperature, so don’t forget to set them out at least half an hour before you want to start mixing.
Most recipes call for using a stand mixer, but we found this counterproductive to our goal of chewy, dense cookies because the mixer beats air into the dough. Instead we make our dough by hand, melting the butter for easier mixing.
Rich and decadent, the recipe for these luxurious cookies was the result of a visit to Café Ilio, an artisan chocolatier in northern Tehran, run by husband and wife team Sahar Hossein-Najari and Mehrdad Aghameeri. The pair spent six years travelling around Belgium, France and Italy, honing their craft, before introducing Iranians to the wonders of fine chocolate, incorporating traditional ingredients – like saffron, pistachio and cardamom – into a whole new world of truffles, macaroons, jams and cakes. Thanks to their winning combination of dark chocolate and sour cherries, these cookies are loved by adults and children alike.
No need to chop the peanuts here–you want them in the mix all nice and chunky. The mixer should break them up just enough.
Thin and crisp with a cinnamon-sugar sprinkle, these are a cross between Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and supermarket graham crackers. Unlike store-bought ones, these are a hundred percent whole grain.
People serve many kinds of cookies and candies to guests on Chinese New Year. Walnut cookies are often included.
Among my German friends, there may be no Christmas cookie more popular than the beautiful Zimtsterne: thick and chewy star-shaped cookies topped with a drift of white meringue that shatters under your teeth. Just the mention of them never fails to elicit deep longing sighs and a faraway look in people’s eyes. Flavored only with cinnamon and the naturally toasty flavor of roasted almonds, Zimtsterne are a study in what is possible with simple ingredients and a little elbow grease. Making Zimtsterne requires some stamina. The dough is sticky, fine motor skills are required for painting on the meringue, and you need lots of counter space to let them dry overnight before baking them. But the effort is all worthwhile. There is much debate about how to bake Zimtsterne so that the cookie stays soft and chewy and the meringue as white as possible. I’ve tried every method out there, but find that drying the cookies overnight and then baking them briefly is the best way.
Once fully cooled, Springerle must be stored in airtight containers, where they will keep for months. Do not eat them right away; they need time to develop their flavor and, more important, their texture. When they are freshly made, in the first few weeks or so, they will be crunchy on the outside but, when pressed, their crust will shatter slightly, giving way to a soft interior. As time goes on, they will get harder and harder, eventually getting so hard that you’ll be able to eat them only after dunking them in hot tea. I prefer Springerle when they get this hard, but others prefer to keep them soft. To do so, store the cookies with a piece of bread or a chunk of apple, which will supply them with moisture and keep them soft (replace the bread or apple every few days) .
Dorie Greenspan: "What I know for sure is that everyone who has these cookies smiles and smiles are pretty powerful."
It’s hard to decide what’s best about this cookie. The texture’s a definite attention-grabber: It has a slight flakiness at first and then it’s all melt. The flavors of the rosemary and Parmesan, one of those meant-to-be matches, are front and center.