This recipe was inspired by my first batch of smoked fig leaf sugar, a creation born of playful experimentation. That sugar ended up in all sorts of places: chocolate cakes and glazed roots, simple syrup, and macaroons. Yet it was this simple, coarse-crumbled cookie that best presented the seductive and subtle notes of incense, musk, and mint.
I was making chocolate chip cookies to take to a friend’s baby shower and I got the idea to throw crumbled potato chips in the cookie dough.
I love snacking on packaged Middle Eastern sesame bars, which are very hard and crunchy. These florentines are much chewier, but their sesame flavor reminds me of those.
Dough
For the lemon lover, delicate sandwich cookies that can either contain a gilding of jam or be made extra lemony with lemon buttercream or lemon curd.
They’re a crumbly Spanish shortbread most popularly known as Mexican wedding cookies or Russian tea cakes.
Welcome to the very sweet union of the macaroon and the candy bar.
These cookies go by the many endearing names for pigs in Spanish: cerdito, cochinito, marranito, or puerquito. This is the recipe that is the most requested on my blog by Mexicans living abroad.
You may think I have gone off the rails by adding curry powder to cookies, but along with the ground and candied ginger, the combo really wakes up a classic American cookie.
The cookies are chubby and chewy and just a little soft at the center -- altogether great.