Butter Cookies – Page 3 – Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World

VANILLA SNAPS AND WAFERS – a classic cookie and ingredient

The classic, with versions for eating out of hand or for using in other recipes

Here’s another head smacker cookie really should have gone into Volume I but somehow escaped our notice. It came up now in a sideways fashion. We’ve finally gotten around to working on Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Treats. You know that cookie. Everyone does. It’s the one you loved as a child, with a simple cookie base that has marshmallow on top, and is then coated with a thin chocolate shell.

That cookie has scores and scores of different version around the world, but the most common uses some equivalent to a Nilla Wafer^® base. So that meant I should start by making… Doh! I’ve never actually worked up a homemade version of Vanilla Wafers. [Sigh]

The result was all we could have hoped for and more. In fact, we discovered that it isn’t a single cookie. It’s actually three.

Use the full amount of flavor and you’ll get a very pleasant cookie to eat out of hand, that adults will enjoy as much as children.
Use a moderate amount of vanilla, and you’ll make something very close to the commercial product. Just better in every way. Real butter and real love make a real difference. Kate says that toddlers in Prague were fed a similar cookie whenever treats were earned.
Reduce the amount of flavor all the way, and you will get the plain, invisible cookie that’s perfect for all the “other” uses these get purchased for. Banana Pudding; El Cheapo Tiramisu; Chocolate Marshmallow Treats; etc., etc., on and on, and suchforth and suchlike.

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe

This is a simple cookie, and it’s meant to be a simple cookie, so I’m going to try to keep the discussion brief. There weren’t many issues that needed to be addressed. It was really a matter of focusing on what we wanted the cookie to be.

First the Eggs

I wanted this to be a light, crispy cookie with a fair amount of air, that would taste a little buttery without coming off as rich. Most recipes in our books and online resources called for one whole egg to go with each stick of butter. I tested that, along with one egg white, and one egg yolk.

The whole egg won handily, both for ease and flavor. Yes, you can make a good cookie with both egg white and egg yolk, but the whole egg is simpler and, for this use, better.

Wait; Haven’t We Made This Before?

For crying out loud! Butter cookies. Sugar cookies. Shortbread. Alfajories. Spritz Cookies. Snaps. They’re all pretty much the same, right? Just butter, sugar, flour, starch, and egg in slightly different proportions, plus a hit of flavor. Was this one really different, or just a variation on one of our existing and already-tested recipes?

Well… no. I went back and crunched the numbers. These are in the same family but the proportions are distinct enough to earn their own name. Same for the classic French cookies we plan to work up someday, such as Langue du Chat (“Cat’s Tongues” a/k/a Homemade Milanos^®), and Tuiles. Those use several egg whites to create a different species within the same genus.

What’s In A Name?

All that recipe comparison work did clarify one thing that was bugging me. These are not a “wafer”!

I am a lawyer in my real life, and have been for 30 years. So I can speak for my profession when I tell you that virtually every non-criminal problem I see comes down to a variation on the theme of frustrated expectations. Person X thought s/he deserved or would get an “A,” ended up with a “B”, and grew angry at that result. So Person X goes back to Person Y to complain, “where is my A?”, and the situation then grows worse because Person Y insists that s/he meant “B” all along. And most of the time both interpretations fit the actual words.

The solution? Define your bloody terms so you can at least know where you really disagree! Try it the next time someone wants to argue about politics. “Exactly what do you mean when you use that word?” You’ll be shocked at how much of your fight disappears, or at least settles down to the amicable question of how words ought to be used.

In any case, I have spent a lot of years getting frustrated over that stupidity, in both my profession and in politics, so I get a little [ahem] picky about calling things by their proper names. A “wafer” is an extremely thin, usually broad cookie like our different Snowflake variations, Tuilles, or Lace Cookies. You can get to that result in many different ways, but that’s the definition.

This cookie does not meet that definition, and thus it isn’t a “wafer.” This cookie is a “Snap”. Harrumph.

We define Snaps as any plain, simple, round cookie that features a clear and focused flavor. Cardamom, Anise, and Black Pepper Snaps feature a single spice. Ginger snaps feature a spice mix with a touch of molasses. But that is the family group, and that is where this cookie belongs. Harrumph I say again! And harrumph for good measure. Harrumph. Harrumph. Harrumph!

Alas, but the outside world does foolish things on occasion. Sometimes it will even [gasp!] ignore it when some large company mislabels what ought to be a Snap as a Wafer. And a wise man has to know his limits. So let us agree on a simple formula, okay?

First, I am in the right. Harrumph. And that means the world is wrong. And thus equity, justice, and fair play are unanimously on my side.

Next, I am not being petty no matter what certain females in my household may choose to imply. Nor childish. Not, not, not!

And no, this isn’t a fight I’m going to win. So how about a compromise?

Let’s agree to call the eating version of this cookie a Vanilla Snap. That’s the tasty one with a full tablespoon of vanilla, which is going to make people sit up and say, “I never thought I’d say it, but these things are capital-G Good.” The weaker versions, which are intended for use in other recipes anyway, can be called by that other name for the sake of allowing the rest of the world to save some face.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Confirmed Again: “Other” Starches Work Better Than Corn Starch

Is the cookie better with a bit of gluten-free starch to supplement the flour? Yes, it is. Cake flour might work too, but we didn’t test it.

Would corn starch work? Yes… but it isn’t as reliable as rice flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot, etc., because you’ll occasionally get a less-done piece that leaves a gummy sensation in your mouth. It’s an effect we wrote about in our book Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World. Corn starch breaks down at a higher temperature than those others, and thus cookies made with corn starch are more likely to have leftover “uncooked starch” in the final product. That’s the underlying problem; it was confirmed again in these experiments; and there’s simply no reason to fight the science. Vanilla Snaps cook until the bottoms brown, which gives a margin of error, but why make use of that margin if you don’t have to?

We usually bake with tapioca starch because it is cheap and readily available in large quantities at our local oriental market. We have tested rice flour and arrowroot too, and found them to be identical. We have read that potato starch fits in too. Corn starch is the only one that requires a higher baking temperature.

Would A Drop Cookie Work?

We always prefer to write up drop cookie recipes when possible, just because they’re so much easier for new people. Refrigerator slice-and-bakes come in second, followed by roll-and-cut cookies, and then by ones you pipe out. What was the best way to go for this one?

The answer depended on what we wanted to do with them. Drop cookies worked fine from the baking perspective, but I simply couldn’t get them to come out even enough to use as a consistent base for the other project. So here is my verdict:

If you’re after the eat-out-of-hand Vanilla Snap version, make a simple drop cookie and be done with it. You don’t need to do it that way, but you can. Kate swears that they also came out a little lighter and crispier than the rolled-and-cut version, though I couldn’t tell the difference.
If you’re after a cookie to use in some other role (like the base of a Chocolate Marshmallow Treat), roll them out and use a cookie cutter. These are dead consistent and thus better as an ingredient. The dough is a little on the sticky side, but works fine if you simply dust with flour as needed.
If you’re trying to jazz things up, add a bit of milk to thin the dough out to a batter, and then pipe out something fancy. You could even sprinkle it with a bit of sanding sugar. It ought to work with a spritz gun as well.

Bake Until The Bottoms Are Good And Tan

Part of the flavor in this cookie comes from actual browning on the bottom. Most cookies want to come out of the oven when they’re still pale, and the edges feel barely set. Leave these in for the full 12 minutes, or until you can see browning around the edges.

CONCLUSION

That’s about it. One forgets that plain old vanilla isn’t that plain at all. It’s a really delicious spice, and it fully deserves to be just as celebrated in a Snap Cookie of its very own. They are as “heritage” as you can get, and well worth making.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN OŘECHY (Filled, Molded faux-Nut Cookies)

A traditional Central European Christmas treat. They require some patience because the special molds need to be filled one by one, but they are unbelievably rich, unbelievably good, and unbelievably charming.

Two things happened right after I published our recipe for Oreshki, the Eastern European faux-nut cookie made with a light, crispy shortbread crust and a luscious dulce de leche filling. First, all our Ukrainian, Russian, and other Eastern European friends descended like a pack of starving hyenas on a fat old antelope with a limp. Don’t worry, we got out of the way in time to avoid injury. The show was magnificent!

Second, our Czech, Polish, and other Central European friends said, “Those are really cool, but it’s not the ‘Molded Nut’ cookies I grew up with. You should work on those too!”

Oh? Kate had only a vague memory of Ořechy from her childhood. Grandma Kandler had the molds, but never made the cookies. “Too much hassle.” So I set to researching and uncovered four – only four! – fairly consistent recipes. It took some tweaking to get them right, but Oh…My…Heavens! We will not have a Christmas tray again that does not feature these ridiculously rich, tender, and flavor filled nutty-mocha treats. They are a hassle, yes. But they are also unique, and unbelievably good.

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe. But this might not be the best article to do that with. It contains some extremely useful tricks.

First, Know Your Target

NOTE ABOUT THE NAME: The Eastern and Central European faux-nut cookies have the same name, languages and spelling aside. It’s pronounced “OH-RZHE-ch-ee”, more or less, with a rolling “r” and the “zh” combined into a single sound that English doesn’t possess, and the “ch” being that guttural, back of the throat sound like the Yiddish name Chaim. English doesn’t have that sound either. The “ee” sound at the end denotes a plural, like putting an “s” at the end of an English word. It technically translates as plain old “nuts”, but in context it’s understood to mean “walnuts;” and that is the shape of the mold. You’ll get it wrong if you try to pronounce it properly, especially since there are small variations between the different Slavic tongues. But who cares? You’ll get credit for trying, and everyone will know what you mean.

The name is the same; but the two cookies could not be more different. The Eastern European one is plain, crunchy, and child friendly. It rings the same chimes as Alfajores in South America, Millionaire’s Shortbread in England, and Stroopwafels in the Low Countries.

The Central European cookie (this one) is a sophisticated flavor bomb aimed at knocking adults on the seat of their pants in rapture. The shell is a walnut cookie so tender you have no choice but to eat them in one big bite. They’ll crumble under your teeth if you try to stretch it to two. The filling is less “buttercream” than a “whipped, flavored butter” redolent with coffee and rum. It’s so rich that we include an instruction to use it sparingly!

The final flavor becomes mocha because the cocoa in one part and the coffee in the other combine into a single unit in your mouth. It doesn’t matter which part (shell or filling) gets the cocoa powder, and which one gets the coffee, so long as each side is only half the final flavor. The recipe below goes with cocoa in the shell and coffee in the filling, but both ways work great.

The Dough Is Easy; The Molding Takes Patience

The dough is simple to make; a straightforward creaming method approach. Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, beat in an egg with an optional touch of extract and/or spice, and then mix in the dry ingredients. The only complication is that one of those ingredients is a large amount of grated walnuts. We’ve yet to see walnut meal in a market, but it’s easy enough to make. Toast whole walnuts for 8-10 minutes in a 350° F (175° C) oven until they’re fragrant. Remove, cool, and then grate down to meal.

NOTE: A rotary hand grater is by far the best tool for this task. Food processors get dicey because walnuts go from “chopped” to “nut butter” in a heartbeat, much faster than almonds or even peanuts. On the plus side, it doesn’t need to be flour-fine. Grating them is plenty good enough.

Then comes the filling of the molds, which is indeed a fidgety chore. Where the Eastern European version is baked in a unique stovetop mold, Central European Ořechy get formed in thin, individual metal molds that go in the oven so the cookies will keep their shape. It isn’t hard, just time consuming because you need to go one by one.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Molds-to-reuse-pre-buttered-768x1024.jpg — This is the Central European mold. Notice those crumbs? Don’t clean them off until you are done! That residue from earlier bakes saves you from needing to butter and flour the molds every time you fill them.

First you coat the inside with a bit of butter, then you dust it with flour, and then you press the dough in with your thumbs until it coats the entire inside of the mold with a layer that’s maybe 1/8″ thick. [NOTE: You only need to butter-and-flour on the first batch. The remaining crumbs from that batch will be enough to prevent sticking on the second, the second for the third, and so on.] Then you scrape off the excess with a flat tool like a metal spatula or bench scraper, and then move onto the next one.

The dough will soften significantly as you work it. That makes the molding easier, and causes no issues. Incredibly tender doughs will do that. The process isn’t hard, just time consuming.

But you aren’t ready to bake just yet!

Trick #1. Freeze or dock the dough baking. We learned the hard way that Ořechy will puff up to be almost level if you put them right into the oven after shaping. It leaves you with a dent more than a cavity.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Version-1-puffed-up-coming-out-of-the-oven-768x1024.jpg — Our first batch came out of the oven with no room for the filling!

You can prevent this by (A) poking in holes in the dough with a fork (“docking”) as you would with a pie crust; or (B) freezing the dough in the molds before baking. Both work, and both leave plenty of room in the final product for your incredibly rich filling.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Version-2-Docked-and-frozen-flattens-much-less-768x1024.jpg — Docked and frozen before baking = generous cavities for filling. Too much room if you use the traditional whipped-butter filling.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Comparison-of-plain-and-frozen-docked-on-white-plate-768x1024.jpg — Version 1 versus Version 2. Either too little room, or too much!

Trick #2. Freeze or dock, but don’t do both. Docking combined with freezing will give you full sized cavities inside your “nuts,” suitable for a normal buttercream, frosting, caramel product, or any other typical filling. Bit the traditional filling for this cookie? A half-teaspoon or so is all you want. As one baker friend said, “a knob the size and shape of an almond.” That’s just about the amount of room that’s left over if you freeze the shells before baking and so nothing else. Docking creates a little bit of extra room. The combination creates too much.

Extra room won’t kill you, of course, The cookies taste just fine with a cavity that’s got some empty space.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Frozen-but-not-docked-middling-puff-768x1024.jpg — Fresh out of the oven. These were frozen but not docked. A nice, noticeable cavity that has just the right amount of room for a super-rich filling. [P.S. I feel your pain if you’re groaning at that poor sheet pan! It was recently used for roasting bones, and then vegetables right after. A few more trips through the elbow grease sink with Barkeeper’s Friend ought to help.]

Trick #3. Ignore both #1 and #2, and then press a hole in to the flat cookies when they are warm from the oven. So you have molded cookies that puffed up in the oven. You pull them out and say, “Oh no! They have no room for filling!”

Not a disaster. Simply press the warm and still-soft center with your asbestos thumb, and you’ll have a dent you can work with. Yes, it is hot, and yes, you can get a minor burn if you have human skin instead of baker’s asbestos. But beauty can be expensive. Even when it’s only beautiful cookies.

On To the Whipped Butter Filling. This couldn’t be any simpler. Whisk the butter until it’s soft and fluffy, and then whisk in the other ingredients: powdered sugar, more grated walnuts, instant espresso/coffee powder, and a good hit of dark rum. That’s it. What you get is a flavor bomb that carries the essence of Prague. If America is the land of cinnamon and sugar, and Scandinavia of cardamom, Prague’s heart belongs to a mix of mocha, nuts, and rum. Utterly scrumptious. Just use it with care because we aren’t kidding about how rich it really is!

Place an almond-sized piece of whipped butter filling between two shells. Close carefully so you don’t shatter the tender pieces. Dust with powdered sugar to complete the illusion, and enjoy. They will improve overnight, hit their peak on Day 3, and be good for another two days after that.

Be prepared for “Wow!”

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Orechi-half-filled-side-view-with-real-nut-pretty-1024x768.jpg

CONCLUSION

Ořechy require some patience because the special molds need to be filled one by one, and they only last for a week or so after they get filled. That makes them a special occasion treat. But you know what? They are also spectacular enough to be a star entry on famous dessert trays in any top coffee house of Prague, Warsaw, Vienna, Budapest, or any of the other great cities of central Europe. They’re the sort of food that tourists taste, gape at, and then go home to tell stories about.

We won’t be making them on any kind of a regular basis. Not even for guests. But you’d better believe we’ll be making them for the holiday tray! They’re just too cute and too fantastically delicious to pass by. The whole family would pine at the loss now that they know what we’d be missing.

Yes, they are that good. And cute, too. Wouldn’t you agree?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Orechi-in-a-wooden-bowl-side-view-cute-1024x768.jpg

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Orechi-recipe-page-2-Central-European-Nut-Dough-Walnuts-791x1024.jpg

PITTSBURGH (KAUFMANN’S) THUMBPRINTS

Pittsburgh’s famous Thumbprint Cookies, originally from Kaufmann’s Arcade Bakery

We’ve documented a lot of different cookies tied to particular European cities, and have more on tap. But that happens in the U.S. too. This one is a specialty of our native city: Pittsburgh, PA. It is a thumbprint cookie with an odd, very tender, but almost chewy texture that is topped with a great pile of dense frosting. The cookie part always has sprinkles (known locally as “jimmies”), which are color coded to match the frosting. Chocolate and vanilla are the most common flavors, but it’s actually traditional to create something unique.

As always, skip to the bottom if you want the recipe without the background

The story in this case begins in the 1890’s when Kaufmann’s Department Store opened it’s showcase location “Dahntahn.” New York had Macy’s and Gimbel’s; Pittsburgh had branches of both stores, but Kaufmann’s reigned supreme. People took the trolley into the Golden Triangle just for the privilege of wandering its twelve enormous floors of retail glory.

The Arcade Bakery was located in a single, small room tucked into a nook off the entrance on 5th Avenue. I remember it well. They sold baked goods of all kinds, but these Thumbprints were the specialty of the house from the 1980’s on. Nowadays you find some version or another in every supermarket and bakery that tries to catch the essence of the city.

What Makes These So Distinct?

In a word, this is the cookie designed for people who home in on the corner pieces of a square cake because they have a touch more frosting per bit. The cookies themselves are plain, pleasant, and maybe a little bland. They’re topped with as much as two inches (2″!) of sweet American frosting.

That’s it in a nutshell.

The Cookie Part

This dough is a joy. The resulting cookie is a nice, simple shortbread with that unique texture, and is handy for many different uses. Just form the dough into a ball, roll it in something showy like chopped nuts or sprinkles, and then press in the thumbprint. Bake in a medium (350 F) oven for 15 minutes. One recipe makes two dozen (24) 3-bite cookies.

The frosting gets added on once they cool, obviously. But I meant what I said about this being a really handy recipe to keep in the files! Jam thumbprints work with this dough too. Put your jam in a microwave-safe bowl and zap it until it foams up with large bubbles. Let it cool, and then spread that on the top before baking. (The pre-cooking prevents it from bubbling over onto your tray).

Or you can combine things, like a jam heart under a frosting or meringue cap. Or you could use a ganache. Or bake the cookies with no filling, add a jam/filling on top, and then choose whether to coat the result.

On and on it goes, with no real stopping point. The master recipe for this shortbread is one of the best and most generally useful that you’re ever likely to find.

The Frosting Is U.S.-Level Sweet

Consider this a warning to our European friends and relatives. The U.S. sweet tooth goes way beyond anything that’s found overseas, or even in other parts of the western hemisphere. You’ve probably heard the stereotype. Maybe even a few jokes to go along with it. I, a native born son, am here to tell you that it’s neither a joke nor untrue. We Americans don’t oversweeten everything we eat; it’s just that we can – and we will when that suits the particular treat. Like this one.

Let me put it another way. I am a notorious chili head. I eat and enjoy peppers so spicy that more than one person will leave the room when I decide to make a real sinus clearer just for myself. I don’t do it for show, nor to prove my manhood. I just like that feeling of sweat breaking out on the forehead, and several decades of pushing that line have created a tolerance that few others possess. As some people from Thailand once told me, “They wouldn’t think you were strange in Bangkok, they’d just say that you like your food really hot.”

The U.S. tolerance and taste for sugar is like the Thai, Indian, Mexican, or my view on spicy peppers. If you have that tolerance and taste, you enjoy foods that push that line just as much as you appreciate normal, human-level foods that do not. If you don’t have that tolerance, you gape in some combination of awe and horror at what others are willing to consume.

The frostings in the recipe below are what Americans will call “good and sweet.” That means (A) they are exactly on point with what you’d buy in a Pittsburgh bakery, and (B) far too sweet for non-natives. We strongly recommend that those in the “B” category should cut the amount of sugar back by a solid 20-40% for the vanilla, and 50% for the chocolate. It will not have any significant effect on the overall volumes.

Part Of The Heritage Is Creating Your Own Versions

All accounts say that Kaufmann’s eventually sold as many as 70 different versions of this cookie. Bakers who’d ‘made their bones’ were encouraged to practice their creative chops on this recipe before branching out into something more artsy. The shop put them all out, and then quietly dropped the ones that didn’t sell.

Strawberry, caramel, cinnamon, spice… the list is endless. And that means that you should play around to create your own version if the basic recipe appeals to you! Want an example? The Kaufmann family seat was the Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece called Fallingwater, which is now a sort of architectural museum. The Fallingwater chef created this unique Peanut Butter Thumbprint as his homage to the cookie (which can also be made with a dab of grape jelly in the middle). It may be unique, but it’s also entirely traditional, because one-of-a-kind experiments are part of this cookie’s tradition.

CONCLUSION

If you are a native Pittsburgher, or especially a former Pittsburgher, this is a recipe to save and treasure. It’s a smell and taste of home.

Other American natives will enjoy it too. It’s a damned fine cookie with its festive sprinkles (“Jimmies” in Pittsburghese); one that’s absolutely perfect for bake sales; and one that can and should be varied to your individual taste.

If you hail from some other nation, you’ll enjoy the cookie too… if and only if you take some care to adapt the frosting to your own taste and tolerance for sugar. Your target is something that children will love, but many of their parents will roll their eyes about. That is the experience of the Kaufmann’s Thumbprint Cookie, even if the recipe will need some tweaking for your particular group of raucous, waiting-to-be-sugared-up school kids.

ORESHKI (FAUX WALNUTS) – Eastern Europe’s Cookie Of Childhood

Confession: I love crossword puzzles, and I’ve done enough to learn certain words that writers can’t seem to do without. Here are some examples of recent clues I’ve seen:

Clue: “Treat that is often twisted”
Clue: “Crispy, pull apart snack”
Clue: “Cookie eaten from the inside out”

Oreos! Duh. Everyone knows that, right? Yes… if you’re from the U.S.A. People who grew up in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, or other countries of central and eastern Europe might well stare at a clue like that with nothing but bewilderment that “Oreshki” doesn’t fit in the grid. What else could the writer possibly be thinking about?

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want to read the recipe. And what the heck. This link will take you to the Dulce de Leche recipe in the middle.

Oreshki are a classic treat that are known and loved from Russia to the east, through Poland and the Czech Republic to the west, all the way down to the Crimean Sea. The formula is easy to describe: start with a very basic cookie dough, shape it into hollow nuts, and then fill the nuts with something gooey that children will love. Subtle? Bah. Sophisticated? Hah! Adult with a capital “A” like spice cookies or ginger snaps? Not in the slightest.

Nice, sweet, and simple. That’s your ticket. This is the cookie of childhood.

Working On The Cookie

If you’re here doing research, let me give you a tip as someone who’s actually read through and pondered several dozen online recipes. Don’t overthink it!

Your problem is easy to state: natives adore their Oreshki to the point that innumerable Eastern European families have now shared their “secret” methods to get them just, exactly right. There’s a lot to go through. The wonders of online translators, combined with a wife who can translate what those will not, allowed me to put together a humongous file of different trips, tips, options, and formulae. It was a true brain buster! But do you know what I found when I averaged things out, and then compared the results to other cookies?

Your target crust is a plain, light, crispy wafer that won’t fight with the filling. Period. Keep that in sight and you won’t have any problems.

Yes, you will be a little confused by how some of the common ingredients get used. I certainly was. But there is a pattern to the strangeness: those “touches” all add up to (i) a hint of acid, and (ii) a bit of “other” fat to supplement the butter. I don’t know why they do it. The amounts are so small that it’s hard to see how these additions could change the result. Nevertheless, it is a clear pattern, our work is about “heritage” just as much as “right,” and so I made a point of testing the variations.

The most common version marries a touch (½-1 tsp.) of vinegar with a tablespoon of mayonnaise, and then uses baking soda instead of powder. I ended up going with 1 tbsp. of sour cream paired with baking powder. Feel free to pursue either route as you wish. The differences will be subtle at best because you aren’t really supposed to notice the crust in the first place. It’s the filling that make Oreshki special.

These crusts get cooked in a special stovetop mold (electric versions being available in some countries). Here is ours, which is made from aluminum and available for a very low price from various sources:

You’ll need to fidget a bit to get the timing right. We ended up at 65-70 seconds per side on our average-sized burner with the gas set to a “2” out of “9.” Don’t expect that to match up with your burner! We also noted that molds filled with fewer cookies toasted faster than ones which were completely full.

Make an effort to keep the inside cookie-tan, like a shortbread, rather than nut brown. That was the one critique we got from our taste testers, and when I went back to do the final batch with that correction all of us noted that the new and lighter-colored cookies were also a bit airier and crisper when eaten.

Finally, you’ll need to trim the shells when they come out of the mold. It’s impossible to get the sizes right every time! A sharp paring knife is the perfect tool. Just don’t throw those trimmings in the trash! Most people simply add them into the filling for a bit of texture. We prefer to recycle them into crumbs for a leftovers-cookie or pie crust (think of how many recipes you know that begin with the instruction, “Grind up some vanilla wafers and then use the crumbs for…”). Do as you will, but please don’t waste what ought to be used.

These shells are too dark. Don’t throw them out, of course. They’ll work well enough. It’s just that lighter colored shells will be crisper, airier, and that much better.

These are what you want. The outsides are darker, the insides are “light tan shortbread”. BTW, do you see that one untrimmed shell on the top right? That’s the norm, and where your extra crumbs come from.

Nailing Down The Filling

The all time classic Oreshki filing is a peculiarly addictive caramel made from dulce de leche. More on that below. But honestly, anything that’s sweet, sticky, and a little bit runny will do. Nutella^® works like a charm. So does lemon curd. It’s hard to go wrong, and none of my native taste testers had anything bad to say about those variations. Playing with your filling is fair game. But there’s that ‘heritage’ thing again, so we really ought to discuss the original version that left so many millions of 8 year old addicts in its wake.

Let’s start with an overview. You’ve seen this flavor profile before! When push comes to shove, this is just another plain shortbread being paired with rich, gooey caramel. In South America that takes the form of Alfajores. In the U.S. it’s a Twix^® bar. In the U.K. it’s Millionaire’s Shortbread. Western Europe has it’s Stroopwafel. Got it? There’s nothing complicated about it. We’re only going to tweak things a little to match the Eastern European palate.

You can start from a true caramel if you wish, but native recipes follow the South American approach by starting with tins of sweetened condensed milk, and then boiling them for a few hours.

After that it’s easy. Soften this up with a bit of butter, add some cream cheese for a mild sour tang, and you’re done. Most recipes suggest the addition of crumbs from the crust-trimmings, and some will also add ground nuts, but those are both optional steps. It really comes down to whether you’re after pure, luscious smoothness on the inside, or luscious smoothness offset by a little bit of crunch.

How To Fill Your Oreshki

It took a few tries, but I’ve now got the system down pat.

Take one shell. Top it off completely with your filling. Use a second shell to scrape that level. Set aside for the moment.
Add filling to the second shell, and scrape that level with a third shell.
Put shell half #1 on top of shell half #2, and then repeat the process until all your shells are done.
NOTE 1: It’s not a bad idea to overfill a bit, and then squeeze the halves together so the excess filling will squish out the sides. Wipe it off with a finger, and then set aside your perfectly filled nuts for further decoration as desired. [What do you do with your filling-dirtied finger? Come on. Really? Being the baker has its upside!]
NOTE 2: Oreshki with a runnier filling may want to go in the fridge to set up.

The only question left is, “to seal or not to seal.” These shortbread-and-caramel treats often come with a chocolate coating. Think of the aforementioned Twix^® bars and Millionaire’s Shortbread. Heck, it’s common to coat Alfajores too in recipes that don’t add coconut. So it makes perfect sense to seal those two halves together with a bit of chocolate, right?

The answer is both yes and no. We liked the caramel ones better with a chocolate seal. No doubt about it. And every one of our native tasters expressed the same preference. “That’s a great touch!”

But then they’d add something like this: “My grandmother never did that. Of course, she didn’t have much access to chocolate back when I was a little girl.”

Again, it’s entirely up to you. A simple dusting with powdered sugar works just as well for chocolate-free versions, and better for those with an alternative filling.

With the ends sealed in chocolate. Very tasty, but not entirely traditional because chocolate was hard to obtain back in the day.

Conclusion

This is a really fun cookie so long as you don’t try to fight its basic core. Oreshki are designed for children, and adults who loved them as children. Sharing them with those children, old and young, is why American bakers will want to make them.

That said, you really, really do want to make them. I can pretty much guarantee a downright special reaction from the actual children in your life, and an even stronger one from adults who grew up in the Oreshki Zone. It’s like dropping a puppy in the lap of their inner child.

First comes the delighted grin. Then the delighted cry, “Oreshki!” Then some insight into a delighted childhood soul. Everyone who eats Oreshki has his/her own special technique. Some pop them in whole and crunch. Others twist them in half, and then crunch. There’s a twist-and-stretch school too; twist, scrape, and crunch; twist, stretch, and lick in midair… You get the idea. Pure, childish glee.

Think that’s going too far? Head on back to the beginning of this article, and the analogy to Oreos^®. Imagine your typical American expat who has moved overseas and built a life somewhere that knows nothing about their childhood treats. Get him or her in a friendly environment, like visiting your home or receiving a tin as a gift. Now open it up and reveal a crispy, black-and-white, twist-apart cookie. What will happen? The exact same thing.

That memory is what Oreshki are really about. That, and creating a similar memory for future generations. It will work, I promise. There’s nothing that Littles enjoy more than something gooey, sweet, and crunchy that looks like something it isn’t. Oreshki are flat out fun at every level.

Enjoy!

MAPLE DROP COOKIES – Americana at its finest

This is the cookie you see in every high end farmer’s market and orchard store across the country. Which is only proper! No one should ever buy a Halloween pumpkin without facing a maple cookie temptation. Alas, but many of those versions aren’t up to par and sometimes (gasp!) they aren’t even available. So here you go.

It is a simple enough recipe, but one that takes a lot of fidgeting to nail down just… exactly… right. This one’s nailed. Is it ever. The only thing to add are the nuggets of experience you’ll want for making your own adjustments.

1. Pecans and maple really do love each other as much as we always think. I tried the cookie with walnuts, and it worked, but it just wasn’t the same. A “7” instead of a “10”.

2. There’s no getting around the maple extract because syrup alone won’t provide the requisite oomph. I’d be curious to try a recipe with maple sugar, and even more curious to use the darker Grade B syrup, but neither are easy to find in my part of the country.

NOTE: We only use natural maple syrup in our house, and that is what we used in the testing. I have no idea how the cookie would work with the flavored corn syrup “artificial” version. Let us know if you do the experiment.

3. That final hit of maple high notes in the glaze/icing/frosting are what send this up to the next level. Don’t leave it out. These photos show a frosting, i.e. the thickest version, but that’s really just a matter of what you want.

NOTE: Give it 24 hours and the topping will dry out enough to pack in a tin without real worry.

4. We’ve gone back and forth on the salt level. My personal preference would be an extra quarter-teaspoon (call it a full 1 tsp. of kosher salt), but Kate thought that gave the cookies a little too much edge, especially before you add the topping.

5. Molasses really helps the flavor by broadening the base of the pyramid. Don’t be tempted to skip it. This amount translates to basically the same thing you’d get from using (a) dark brown sugar in place of the specified white, or (b) light brown sugar plus a single tablespoon of molasses.

That’s about it. Simple cookie, great flavor, with almost no fuss, muss, or bother. Enjoy!

BRETON SHORTBREAD TASSIES – the ultimate butter cake in the guise of a cookie

They say that only two groups of people give free samples away: drug dealers and fudge makers. It isn’t quite true. Our friend Jean-Marc Chatellier offers free samples of this ultimate butter cake at his famous bakery in the riverside township of Millvale, PA. But the logic is the same in all three cases: one taste and you’re hooked. The only difference is this: Breton Shortbread a/k/a Butter Cakes a/k/a Gateau Breton beats them all when served with a dollop of crème fraîche and a berry or two.

This recipe went in and out of Volume I for ages.

SCOTT: “It’s a cake, not a cookie.”

KATE: “So what? We cut it into bars half the time anyway.”

SCOTT: “No bar cookies!”

KATE: “But it’s too good to leave out.”

SCOTT: “Do it as a tassie?”

KATE: “I dunno… Isn’t that cheating?”

See what happens when you have two authors and both of them are of two minds? But now that we have a blog to fill, with that harvest tang in the air? Oh, heck yeah.

*“Here my friend. Have a taste. One little taste can’t hurt you, can it?”*

Honest to God, folks. You can build an entire bakery around this recipe. They are that good.

NUT HORNS (a/k/a Kipferl a/k/a Hornchen a/k/a Mexican Wedding Cookies, Russian Wedding Cookies, Italian Wedding Cookies, Greek Kourambiedes, etc.)

This is a sample drawn directly from our book Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World. The first part is our favorate “Cookie Nerd Moment” of the entire tome. This is where we stop and take the time to discuss particular tricks, tips, and historical bits that provide a lot of the “why” behind the recipe’s “what.”
You can skip to the bottom if you really want only the recipe, but this is one case where I need to recommend the full read even if you know what you’re doing. The refresher course on Tips and Tricks never loses its value.
Enjoy,
Scott Pavelle

COOKIE NERD MOMENT

Anyone who makes 20 or 30 different cookies each Christmas gets used to two common questions: “What are your favorite cookies” and “What is the favorite cookie in general?” There is no answer. Everyone has his or her own favorite and there isn’t a single cookie that would touch the 10% mark if we kept track of who voted for what.

You probably could have guessed those two if you’d given it a bit of thought. But the third most common question might surprise you: “Do you know how to make [Nut Horns]?” We put that in brackets because the same basic cookie is loved with fervor and devotion across a huge part of the world with very minor changes. In Central Europe the cookie’s known by some word that translates as either Nut Horns or Nut Crescents (Kipferl in Austria and Hörnchen in Germany are two examples). Eastern European bakers shape them into balls, often with a heavier percentage of walnuts, and call them Russian Tea- or Wedding Cookies. Move south and west and the name turns into Italian Wedding Cookies, also ball shaped but with a tilt toward almonds. The south and east features ball-shaped Greek Kourambiedes, which have slightly fewer nuts but include some brandy. The New World knows them best as Mexican Wedding Cookies, which usually feature pecans. We could go on.

Simplicity plays a big part in the cookie’s charm. It’s all about the nuts, with vanilla to heighten their impact. Powdered sugar goes on top – a heavy coat that may also have a hit of vanilla. The Greeks stand out by adding a single whole clove for decoration.

There’s also a common structural theme: you’re after a cookie so tender that it will shatter to fragments at the slightest excuse, and will dissolve in your mouth with a burst of buttery, nutty goodness. That’s the hard part – getting them just tough enough to wait for an excuse without losing that meltiness.

We spent many years fidgeting and playing with this recipe to get it just right. The final product incorporates a number of subtle tricks that will add up to make the best [Nut Horns] you’ve ever eaten. Better even than Grandma’s!

TRICK #1 (for flavor): Toast the nuts in advance. It gives you a longer, deeper flavor.
TRICK #2 (for texture): The textures from your nuts matter as much as the flavors. We strongly prefer to mix that texture up to give the full experience from meltingly soft in most parts to recognizable bits sprinkled here and there. We always start by using a rotary grater to reduce at least half the nuts to a point just short of where you’d start calling them “nut flour.” Maybe even a little short of “nut meal.” The other half should be a mix of textures ranging from “finely ground” to “finely chopped”. If push comes to shove we suggest a 50/50 mix of nut flour for the first half and ground nuts for the second. Grandma may have ground all the nuts for convenience but even she would agree that mixing the textures adds something extra.
TRICK #3 (for flavor and texture): We also favor a mix of nuts. This particular trick may cause Grandma to start muttering about upstarts and heretics when you mention it, but trust us: a little hint of walnut will make your pecans taste more “pecany”, just as some almond and hazelnuts will make your walnuts more “walnutty.”
TRICK #4 (for flavor): A hefty pinch of salt also enhances the nut flavors. Just make sure to use so little that no one can tell it’s there.

TRICKS #5.a to 5.c (to counter fragility): Our recipe hovers right on the edge of falling apart into a 50% casualty rate from being too tender. There are several tricks and options designed to pull it back from that horizon. You’re going to need at least one of them:
- A spoonful of water in the flour adds just enough gluten to hold it together. This trick doubles as a way to customize for your particular kitchen and flour.
- An egg yolk in the dough works too and is more traditional, but can make the cookies caky if it goes too far. This was the “cheat” that Grandma used in secret because her best friend, the one she wanted to bake like, didn’t need to.
- Working the dough as you form the crescents can also add a little gluten, but it comes with a real warning: the heat of your hands can melt the butter in your dough, which turns the cookies oily and guarantees they’ll be too tender.
TRICKS #6.a to 6.c (to counter toughness): Our recipe uses so many nuts that fragility tends to be the bigger problem, but sometimes you have to go the opposite way. We ran into this when we lived in Boston and used the high protein King Arthur as our house default. Here are some techniques that will add tenderness without changing the basic formula:
- Remove any extra water or flour from your dough.
- Refrigerate the cookies on their tray for 30 minutes before baking. This will relax any built-up gluten.
- Remove a tablespoon of flour from the recipe.
TRICK #7 (for flavor): It’s a little counterintuitive but this particular cookie actually tastes better if you narrow the “horns” of your crescents toward the ends. Yes, the easiest way to make a crescent is to form the dough into a rope and then bend it in the middle. Yes, that is a typical way to ensure even baking by creating an even thickness. Yes, you can even treat this as a roll-and-cut cookie with fine results. But this isn’t a typical cookie. Having some parts toastier and others tenderer will only add to the sense that you’re eating something made from [nuts!!!].
TRICK #8 (the post-oven danger zone): You must cool these cookies on the tray until they are only warm. They are ridiculously fragile when hot from the oven and will fall apart if you even stare too hard.

TRICK #9 (for a final touch): We aren’t big believers in fancy chancy “touches” like scenting the powdered sugar for a few days with a more-expensive-than-gold vanilla bean bought for the purpose. This is the one recipe where we sometimes make an exception. Not always… but sometimes. There’s something about the wafting smell of vanilla that seems to stimulate a person’s specialized nut detector taste buds. [What, you never heard of those? Try a proper Nut Horn and you’ll see the proof for yourself!]
TRICK #10 (coating with enough powdered sugar): Warm cookies are fragile cookies, but nevertheless you must coat them with the powdered sugar while they are warm because the outgassing steam helps the sugar to stick. Kate likes to move the whole sheet of parchment onto a cooling rack, dust them there, wait 5 minutes, and then turn them over to dust what had been the bottoms.

PUMPKIN PIE SPICED SNICKERDOODLES – The American spice cookie with the American spice mix

Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World contains a whole section on spice cookies, with a long set of recipes for the spice mixes alone. The idea is simple. Find the spice mix you like, acknowledge the regional roots for that combination, and then use the mix willy nilly in refrigerator cookies, snaps, molded cookies, and whatever else you choose to make.

Bing, bang, boom. Simple as can be.

I always forget how good these are until I make them again, and say “Wow.”

America’s signature spice cookie has to be Snickerdoodles, an extremely simple drop cookie made purely with cinnamon. No spice mixes for us! Until the last few decades, that is. Writing in 2021, I can certify that Pumpkin Pie Spice has become an annual harvest event every bit as common as Jack O’Lanterns in the yard. Why fight a good thing? Here is our version of this now-ubiquitous spice blend, along with a variation on our published recipe for Snickerdoodles.

Please Note: We aren’t kidding about the capital-O Opinions that people have on what makes the proper ratio for your spiced sugar coating. Our daughters join me as Even Steven Types. We prefer a 50/50 ratio. Kate, a summa cum laude graduate of the Accent Only School, greatly prefers a 2:1 ratio of sugar to spice. Any more than that leaves bitter notes on her palate. Make a note on your recipe about where you stand.

Enjoy!

Scott and Kate’s Pumpkin Pie Spice Mix

(makes slightly more than ¼ cup = 4⅓ tbsp = 65 ml)

2 tbsp. cinnamon
1 tbsp. ginger (not old)
2 tsp. nutmeg (not old)
1 tsp. ground allspice
1 tsp. ground clove

CHOCOLATE FUDGE COOKIES – ‘Nuff said.

Admission time. There is one treat that I will not study because I don’t want to live with the costs of success. Fudge. Fudge is my bane. I have avoided drugs my entire life because fudge taught the lesson I needed to learn.

No heroin for me, thank you very much. No cocaine. No exotic “baths” with comely and eager triplets. And no fudge. My fear of the f-word is a big part of why Heritage Cookies Of The Old And New World has no section on bar cookies. That would have required me to develop a recipe for brownies. No. Just no.

Enter a certain someone who shall not be named.

“But what about fudge cookies? This isn’t as bright a line as you’re pretending! That high end cookie shop in the mall has this dense, ultimate-chocolate bomb thing? Not a brownie, and not just a double-chocolate chocolate-chip, but something dense, and smooth, and decadent, and… [sigh]. That’s got to be a heritage cookie too, right? They’ve been everywhere since at least the 1970’s.”

Oh. Bloody. Damn. 50 years. That’s long enough to count. And yes, I know the exact cookie that [Unnamed] was talking about. Gauntlet accepted. That’s the cookie we’re about to discuss.

But please. Please! Think twice before you read any further! Will your world really be a better place with a cookie like this inside it? With a recipe for that cookie? Sitting on your shelf or in your computer, biding its time and waiting in ambush like a crocodile in the weeds of your diet? If the answer is “No,” then do us all a favor and turn around now. This is a slippery slope, and once you get started, you’re doomed.

As always, skip to the bottom if you want the recipe without the discussion.

*“Luke. If you only knew the Power of the dark side…”*

Where to begin?

Do me a favor. Go to your favorite search engine and look up “chocolate fudge cookies recipe.” My effort came back with One Hundred Million results in 0.78 seconds. Yours too? Now look a few over. I think you’ll agree that most of the collection is a mess, with way too many are simple riffs off the classic Tollhouse recipe. “Add some cocoa powder, or extra large chunks instead of chips, and you’ll have a whole new treat!!!” Uhhhh, no.

That said, if you dig through enough of them for other approaches, you’ll start to see some standard proportions where better bakers have all ended up.

Cocoa powder in the dry ingredients, plus extra chocolate in the dough;
Butter as the fat; and
For every 4 ounces of fat (one stick of butter), something like 1 cup (5 ounces) of flour, a bit less than 1 cup of sugar (call it 6 ounces), and one whole egg.

That was enough to get started, but I had a few tricks of my own to include in the mix.

We have discovered that made with oil deliver a cleaner chocolate flavor. That needed to be explored. Maybe melted butter? Or ghee?
We like to enhance chocolate flavor with a bit of salt, a healthy hit of vanilla, a subtle addition of coffee flavor, and/or a bit of spice. The last one wouldn’t fit this cookie, but the first three had definite potential (and ended up in the final recipe).
You can create different chocolate effects by adding chocolate flavor in various layers rather than higher volume. Cocoa powder, bloomed cocoa powder, chocolate in melted, grated, chopped, and chunky forms… All of that can significantly alter the result.

Experimental Results

I originally wrote this up as a blow by blow account of every experimental batch, but my lovely editors complained that it ran too long. Way too long. F-word cookies take some work if you want to put out a recipe worthy of the name. So what follows is more of a summary about the collected lessons learned rather than the process I followed.

It took several batches to really nail the balance between butter and oil. I started at 50/50, and even tried a batch made purely with clarified butter (ghee), but ended up with a cookie made from butter enriched with a hit of oil. It was the texture that suffered. Imagine diving off a board, and then finding yourself underwater without that moment of transition. It’s not something you’d think is important, but you notice when it’s missing. That was the effect we got from using pure fat in the dough. It was all parts fudgy inside, with too little surface crunch.

OTOH, regular, creamed butter was just too cookieish. Melted butter found the best compromise between just enough outer crispness combined with an especially fudgy interior. It also saved a few minutes of effort, and… You know what? Why bother with all that chopping when I could just melt the bulk of the chocolate into the dough?

Melting the chocolate! That turned out to be the magic trick that sets this cookie apart. Finally – finally! – the muse in charge of baking decided to spare me a peck on the cheek.

*Hey little dieter. Want a taste? How can a single bite do you any harm?*

The rest of the development process took some time to perfect, but that was more craft than art. The very thing we don’t want to weigh this down with. So here is that promised shortcut list of lessons and observations instead:

Blooming the cocoa powder in hot water or coffee doesn’t add enough flavor to be worth the hassle. Just sift it in with the flour and baking powder.
Different cocoa powders might matter, but we did not do that experiment. We used a good dutched cocoa powder in every version.
Chocolate chips pressed into the top distract from the cookie itself. Don’t bother.
But chocolate pockets in the dough make a nice addition if you get the size right. Go with something larger than standard chocolate chips, but not as big as the commercial chocolate chunks. A little trimming of the chunks achieved my perfect compromise. This is in addition to the melted chocolate (see below).
Use white sugar instead of brown. Chocolate clarity works better in this case than muddying the flavor in the name of complexity. And don’t use too much. Those Internet recipes typically used a full cup of sugar in a recipe this size, but we strongly preferred cutting that back by a full 25%. Closer to 5 ounces than 7.
Do not skip the flavor enhancers, and particularly not salt. It’s a case where your ~~victims~~ [ahem] consumers should end up saying, “Is that a hit of salt I taste? It’s surprising, but I like it!” Kate adored it. The vanilla and coffee should be much more subtle.

At Heart It Is All About The Chocolate

The chocolate you use in this cookie matters more than you’re going to think. I actually found that out by accident.

This effort involved so many batches in this effort that we ended up digging deep into the leftover supplies from other cookies. That meant different batches with different brands of chocolate, and the clear differences from one to the other surprised us all. So much so that I made a special trip to the Strip District for a different high-end chocolate to use in one of the final batches. And yes, it produced a different and correspondingly high-end result.

There is a full quarter-pound of melted chocolate in this dough, and it matters.

Don’t mess around. Just invest in and use a darker chocolate that you genuinely like to eat. But it is not a “darker is better” thing. The cocoa powder adds that extra edge all on its own. This is a case where “better is better.” It really is that simple.

Final Notes

All joking aside, the cookies kept surprisingly well in a tin. Even I hit my chocolate saturation point with this many batches, so they ended up getting snitched one or two per day. Not just by me, I hasten to add, which I know from the mix of compliments and curses that kept coming my way! In any case, the cookies were almost as good on Day 10 as Day 1. The recipe says a week, but that includes some general caution that wasn’t required in my own home.

Don’t try to make these extra large. They are plenty rich enough to deliver all the chocolate you want, and delicate enough to fall apart if you start to get physics and gravity involved. Those crumbs you see in the photos are not a coincidence. Balls of dough with a diameter of 1-1/2″ to 2″ across yield 2-3 bite cookies, which is just what you really want.

For whatever reason – and I haven’t figured it out – these cookies don’t tend to spread anywhere near as much as you’ll think they should. So feel free to pat the pieces down on your tray before baking, and expect to have little mounds of intensely chocolate goodness at the end. 50% spread rather than the normal doubling.

*They keep better than you’d think, and spread a bit less than you’ll expect.*

CONCLUSION

This may be the one cookie I really regret. Not because it falls below our standard. It doesn’t. It’s awesome. The problem lies in feeling like I’ve betrayed your trust.

Our work is to cookies what $80 bottles are to wine. Things that are rare, special, occasionally unique, and meant to be savored by those who appreciate more than just another treat. These? These are high end smack, not wine. Intravenous chocolate injections. Oh, you’ll enjoy the trip. Will you ever! But will you ever forgive me? That’s harder to say.

Enjoy! Just don’t say you haven’t been warned.

GHRAYBEE – The Great Middle Eastern Shortbread

Also known as: “Adventures In The Land Of Butter”

NOTE: There are at least a dozen different ways to spell the name of this cookie even though everyone seems to agree on the pronunciation. For the first syllable-and-a-half, imagine the word “gray”, pronounced with an extra-hard “G” in a Cockney accent to sound almost like “g-rye”. The second syllable is pronounced “bee,” like the insect. The efforts to turn that into letters has somehow resulted in “Ghorayebah,” “Graybah,” “Ghrybi,” “Gorabee”, and several others you’ll find with any quick search online. We went with the spelling that seemed closest to the pronunciation: “Ghraybee”. But of course, so did every other writer… [Sigh].

As always, please skip to the bottom if you are only here for the recipe. The rest of this article covers the all-important “why” behind the “what.”

It might be best to start with some definitions:

Clarified Butter: To make one (1) cup of clarified butter, start with 1¼ cups of raw butter (i.e., 25% more than you want to end up with) and then cook it on medium-low heat until melted. Skim off the foam, and then spoon out the golden goodness, leaving behind the water and the solids on the bottom. That goodness is pure butter fat, a/k/a clarified butter. It tastes just like regular butter, but is pure butterfat that will handle differently when cooked.

Ghee/Samneh: Don’t just melt the butter, but instead continue to cook on medium-low until the major bubbling stops, which indicates that all the water has been cooked out. Spoon or pour out the remaining liquid, leaving any remaining solids behind. It has a slightly more intense flavor that clarified butter because the fat absorbs the flavor of the now-cooked butter solids. Ghee has become available by the jar at various markets and is easy to find in any that are oriented toward Indian food. Indian Ghee and Arabic Samneh are basically identical, subject to minor differences in brand that in turn alter the cooking time or temperature, and the original milk sources (butter from different cows has a subtly different flavor).

Browned Butter: Follow the procedure to make Ghee but keep on cooking at medium-low until the solids at the bottom turn nut brown and heaven’s own aroma sings through your kitchen. This is the end of the line. Go any further and the solids will blacken and burn, infusing a bitter flavor instead of Ultimate Butter.

Put another way, clarified butter is pure butterfat; browned butter is clarified butter flavored with toasted butter solids; and ghee is halfway between the two. All three appear in more savory recipes than baked goods because removing the solids significantly raises the “smoke point” of the fat; i.e., the temperature when your cooking fat begins to burn and turn bitter. Most cooking oils have a smoke point between 400° and 450° F. Regular butter begins to smoke at 302°. These clarified butter fats have a smoke point all the way up to 482°! Higher temperature cooking yields more browning, which equals more flavor, and so forth. None of which matters for us, of course.

What matters for Ghraybee is the extra flavor and tenderness that come from using purified butter fat instead of regular butter.

Help! I have Butter Overload Syndrome and need to be consumed by a photographer with a sense of humor!

NOTE: As always, I recommend skipping to the bottom if you’re only after the recipe. The bulk of what follows is about the process of getting there and what we learned along the way.

Initial Failures and Discovering Ghraybee

I’ve been working for years on the idea of a shortbread cookie made with browned butter instead of regular butter. Why? Because I adore browned butter! Butter is always good, but browned butter sits at a whole new flavor level. I started the effort with a straight butter cookie recipe but found that the shapes wouldn’t hold when I used browned butter in place of plain. The cookies also came out exceptionally rich, almost too much so, and the outsides felt a bit greasy. Then I tried adding some egg yolks to create an emulsion. Still didn’t work. Then I tried adding back the 25% water that I cooked off to brown the butter in the first place. No dice. Same with milk instead of water. Arrrgh! Finally, I cheated by making a straight butter cookie and adding a browned butter frosting. Okay, that worked well enough to ease my frustration even though it wasn’t worth the effort. But it was enough to let me move on to other projects that at least satisfied my interest in heritage recipes over creative ones. Someday, maybe…

You can imagine my excitement when, a few years later, I came across a recipe for Ghraybee, a famous and much-loved cookie with a fantastic history that was made from clarified (or browned!) butter. I’d missed it for all these years because my focus has been on Europe, and this is a purely Middle Eastern treat.

I dove right in to the research, and you know what? Ghraybee bakers suffer from the same problems that I ran into but have a few centuries of experience and advice on how to overcome them. The first thing I noticed surprised me. Ghraybee contain no eggs, nor any of the vanilla you see in basically every European butter cookie. Quite the opposite. Ghraybee are a stripped down, essentials-only recipe made from nothing except flour, sugar, butter, and a tiny bit of orange blossom water to make the butter taste more interesting. The tricks are all about technique, experience, and understanding what’s going on.

First and foremost, you need to understand that the cookie is designed and intended to hold the greatest possible amount of butter. This means that you will often get excess butter oozing out – greasiness – at every stage, particularly if the dough gets too warm. What solves that is time. Let the dough rest overnight, and it will absorb the greasiness back inside. Let the shaped cookies rest in the fridge or freezer, and ditto. Same thing for the cookies when they come out of the oven. They should feel a little greasy. It’s a sign you’ve done it right. The sensation will vanish as the cookies age.

I’d been on the right track from the beginning. I just hadn’t been patient enough.

Mix Very Well Indeed

Second, you want to beat the dough for a very long time. The first recipe I found (from Egypt) suggests a three-stage mixing effort at low, then medium high, then low again for 5 minutes each. (You can find this recipe online under the name “Perfect Ghorayebah”). That worked, and you could see visible changes over the first 5-10 minutes; but to be perfectly honest, we saw no changes at all over the final 5 minutes, and after a great deal of testing we think the whole rigamarole is excessive. Ten minutes on medium is all the mixing you need. It’s still much more than one usually sees.

It does make a difference, at least for consistency. The one batch we tried with minimal mixing behaved differently at the forming stage, and lost several cookies to fractures in the oven. So that is out. But why a full 10 minutes instead of just 4-5? We’ve wracked our brains and our research sources alike, and have no good answer. We can only speculate based on our semi-informed understanding of food chemistry.

What the beating process does not do is build up gluten. Gluten forms when two proteins in flour (gliadin and glutenin) combine in the presence of water. Beating the flour makes that happen faster, and helps the gluten molecules combine into long sheets. Ghraybee dough has no material amount of water, and thus you should get no gluten regardless of how long you beat the dough. It isn’t about gluten.

Could the long beating be an attempt to remove air bubbles created when the butterfat gets softened in the mixer? Maybe… but if so, why not use a melted product instead of whipping it in the first place? We tried that too. The cookies tasted right but crossed the line into being a bit too tender.

That’s left us with only two hypotheses. First, the long beating time ensures absolutely uniform distribution of all the ingredients. This is emphatically not one of those cookies where you want identifiable bits of pure butter surrounded by dough. Second, we think it may force some of the butterfat into the granules of flour. Recall that Ghraybee repeatedly hover on the edge of that point when they’ll turn greasy because a butter slick escaped from the binding flour, but then reabsorb that extra butter fat when you give the dough (and later the cookies) several hours to do so. It makes some intuitive sense that the totally dry flour might benefit from a kickstart at the beginning in the form of extended time in the mixer. Especially since the dough felt a little greasy even after that long beating time, but then felt fine after a night in the fridge and time on the counter to soften.

Is the extra-long beating time essential? Maybe not. Most Ghraybee say no more than, “mix very well.” That Egyptian recipe was the only one I found that made a religion out of the process. We’ve specified the time and speed only because “very well” is a little vague, 10 minutes works, and why mess with success? Let us know if you try a shortcut approach. We’d be curious to hear your results, both good and less so.

Semolina? Who do you plan to share with? This is a cultural icon.

The next trick is more controversial and dips you into the murky world of Middle Eastern politics: adding in some semolina flour a/k/a farina. The bakers I spoke with (American immigrants) told me that semolina is a thirstier flour that will hold the butterfat a little tighter. The downside is a change in texture. Semolina makes the cookies a little sandier. Is that bad? The answer, it turned out, was all in the eye of the beholder. If you grew up with semolina versions (common in Syria and other places), that sandy texture is part of the experience, and the cookies won’t be “right” if it’s missing. If you grew up in Lebanon or Egypt, semolina is anathema because the ultra-fine crumb is part of what makes the Ghraybee – you guessed it – “right”. Though it might be more accurate to say that everyone views the alternative approaches as “wrong…” and will care about that even though it’s said with an obligatory, self-deprecating laugh.

It iss a little hard to come up with a cultural equivalent for the U.S., but let’s try this: Think of your perfect brownie. Got it? Now imagine that someone comes and proudly shares their favorite recipe… and it isn’t all of that. The product may be good when taken on its own merits, but no argument in the world will dent your conviction that someone has failed to grok the One True Way. Maybe it’s too fudgy, or not fudgy enough. Maybe it’s too soft, or too crispy, or too thin, or too puffy. Maybe it has chips, or chips that are too big or too small. Or nuts, or no nuts. Maybe the chocolate flavor is too pronounced or too attenuated. But the fact is, it won’t be right.

No one is saying that your friend will suffer eternal damnation for the trivial sin of misunderstanding these culinary truths. But a few years of penance? Maybe. It’s certainly not going to help his/her case up at the pearly gates. [Insert self-deprecating laugh.]

We all know these are matters of taste. People are allowed to prefer one type of brownie over another. It may even be a good thing in the broader picture. But that doesn’t change the fact that brownies are supposed to be smooth and fudgy, not cakey, and those who disagree are just plain wrong. And don’t even get me started on the Whipped Cream Heretics who waste those extra egg whites in a Key Lime Pie instead of using them for meringue as the good Lord intended. That’s got to cost them at least a decade in purgatory, scrubbing some heavenly pots and pans.

That is the culture of Ghraybee in a nutshell. People love this cookie so much that they genuinely care when it isn’t “right,” even if all parties understand that it all comes down to what you grew up with. There’s even a modern tradition of bakers who make “improved” Ghraybee by such adventurous risks as adding ground almonds or pistachios to the dough. Everyone loves those if said baker takes the time to put a modifier on the name: “Pistachio Ghraybee”, “Ghraybee with nuts,” etc. Just don’t get caught describing an “A” when someone else will think it’s a “B.” Not unless you’re willing to argue about the reality that there are as many Ghraybee versions across the Middle East as there are for butter cookies across the nations of Europe.

Dealing With The Richness

Why fight what ought to be embraced? One of my early testers took me into the aisles of his Middle Eastern grocery to point out packages of commercial Ghraybee. They came in several shapes – but not several sizes. Every single cookie one was very small compared to what we usually make; no more than 1¼” to 1½” across (325-350 mm). Aha!

The cookie packs an oversized wallop of butter? Make a smaller cookie. They do, and you should.

Dealing With The Shapes

Every source we’ve read or consulted had the same advice: keep it simple. Most Ghraybee are shaped into a small O, C, or S shape, with a single flaked almond or pistachio half as an ornament. We think the pistachios look better, but your mileage may vary. A minority of recipes just went with drop cookies by squashing small balls, with an almond or pistachio pressed in the center. Again, do as you wish. But we do urge you to use some kind of nut as a decoration because it provides some contrasting texture. Salted nuts add in interesting pop of extra flavor, but preferences vary.

We also feel obliged to note that shaping the cookies can be a midlevel chore depending on whether you’re one of those people who are blessed with cool hands versus hot hands. We are in the latter category, and found to our chagrin that the dough came out of the fridge rock hard, and then fought us at every stage by (a) sticking to our palms like crazy, and (b) softening into paste before we finished up. Imagine shaping cold butter in your hands and you’ll understand what’s going on.

We solved the sticking problem by dusting our hands with a little flour. It works perfectly so long as you expect to have the problem, and keep a little bowl by your side.

We solved the softening problem by working quickly and returning any too-soft pieces to the fridge for a few minutes.

We also learned that our trays of shaped cookies come out more regular if we put them in the freezer for 5-10 minutes, or the fridge for 10-20. That brought everything back to the same temperature and ensured even baking.

SHAPING NOTE #1: Interviews with experienced Ghraybee makers show that those problems are a personal thing more than a technical one. Some people run into difficulty with the shaping, and others do not. We really do think it’s a question of cold hands versus hot hands, rather than anything to do with the recipe. You see the same thing with pie crusts sometimes. The cookies come out just as well regardless.

SHAPING NOTE #2: Kate did an experiment where she put those too-soft pieces in a piping bag and used that to make the cookies instead of rolling the pieces in our hands. It worked – the dough really does get soft enough to pipe – but the results were similar to cookies made from liquid butterfat. They crossed the line into being too tender, and fell apart even on the cookie sheets.

About the Sugar…

American bakers have such a legendary sweet tooth that it has become a common joke in every immigrant community we’ve explored. And, sure enough, the base recipe I put together from various English-language sources came out a bit too sweet for the palate of those who knew this cookie from childhood. Citizens who grew up in the States loved them, of course. I have deferred to tradition in the recipe that follows, and made the cookie to Middle Eastern standards by using 3 ounces (85g) of powdered sugar. If you want to adapt it to the tastes of American children, increase the sugar to 4 ounces (115 g).

Final Thanks

Additional thanks go out to Barbara Pabotoy, a fine baker we met on Facebook who shared her mother’s Lebanese version of the cookie (“Ghraybeh”). I get the feeling that she’s confused about how long it took us to feel comfortable in sharing a recipe that’s second nature for her and her family. I can only answer with the words “pie crust” and “omelet.” And the snide, totally unworthy observation that I’m betting she has nice, cool hands for dealing with the shaping process.

Some things are so simple that they take some practice to master. Those same things usually end up being some of the best exemplars of the larger craft. Ghraybee fall in both of those categories. Don’t be surprised if it takes you a little fussing before the process suddenly becomes easy. But stick with it! Oh yes, definitely do that. This may be the most buttery cookie that it’s possible to make, even in theory. It’s certainly the biggest butter bomb that we’ve ever made, and it won’t be a stranger in the house moving forward. These are a true, close-your-eyes, omigod-where-have-you-been-all-my-life experience to treasure.

Enjoy!