Look up “pumpkin cookie recipe” and two versions will pop right up: chewy and cakey. Our recipe for Chewy Pumpkin Cookies already went up. Both of us are on Team Chewy, so that one got priority in the testing process. But you know what? Scott asked our ever-eager cookie testers about both, and the vote ran very close to 50/50. Team Cakey voted as long, loud, and often for their favorite as the loyal adherents to our favored party. Chewy-biased as we are, we have to agree our neighbors have a valid point. These Cakey Pumpkin Cookies are very, very good indeed. We will definitely make them again when the right opportunity appears.
NOTE FROM KATE: This cookie tastes less sweet than the chewy one – until you ice it. Whether you single-dip or double-dip your cookie in the icing will determine the sweetness level of every bite. If you wish to freeze these, and they will go stale faster than the chewy ones, there’s a definite way to get the best results. First, let the icing dry completely and/or freeze them individually on a baking sheet (recommended if you’ve done anything decorative). Then nestle the dried-icing cookies in a container with a tight-fitting lid, placing baking parchment between each layer. And remember: icing-destructive sticking will definitely occur if you put the cookie into their container while sticky, but it can occur as they thaw. Best to separate the frozen cookies earlier than later.
Get The Moisture Out!
Pumpkin keeps your cookies moist. That’s all to the good. Wet pumpkin? That creates unpleasant, pumpkin flavored snails. Moral of the story?
Get the extra moisture out!
Chewy Pumpkin Cookies do this by cooking the pumpkin in browned butter until the water is gone. That isn’t an option for this recipe, which starts with creamed butter (i.e., softened butter beaten until white, light, and fluffy). That means you need to dry the pumpkin out by hand.
We tested a few methods and ended with a clear favorite. First, it really helps to start with canned pumpkin because that’s already much drier than what you’d serve as a side dish. In fact, you’re going to find it in the baking aisle rather than with the other vegetables because the companies assume it will be used for some kind of pie, and don’t want customers to wrongly assume it’s ready to eat as-is. But pie recipes call for barely-damp pumpkin. That’s what is in the cans. Cookies want all-but-dry pumpkin.
We get there by putting the pumpkin in a fine mesh sieve and then blotting both the top and the bottom with some paper towel. Then we stir it with a spatula, squeeze out the paper towel, and repeat until it’s no longer absorbing a matieral amount of water.
This process taxes several mix-and-blot episodes, but it works and is definitely worth the time. Pro Tip: wring out the wet paper towel and keep reusing it until most of the water is gone. Then switch to a clean towel in order to see the moisture better for your final blottings.
NOTE FROM SCOTT: Blottings? Is that even a word? Some baker’s equivalent to etchings? “Hey Babe, how about stopping up to look over my blottings…” Something tells me that particular pick up line might not work as well as the other.
NOTE FROM KATE: See what I have to put up with?
The Recipe Could Not Be Simpler Once You Remove The Excess Moisture
Have you got your pumpkin basically dry? If so, you’ve got this nailed. The rest is easy.
Beat the softened butter with the sugars (white and brown) until light, white, and fluffy. I.e., “cream the butter” if you speak bakerese. Then beat in an egg until smooth. Follow by folding in the pumpkin along with some vanilla (or better yet, some vanilla spiked with maple). Now stir in the dry ingredients, taking care to avoid an eruption, and then refrigerate until the flavors meld and the texture sets into a consistent dough.
Done.
Baking that dough is even simpler. Portion onto baking sheets and let her rip.
To be fair, we inevitably add a third step, but that’s not exactly a challenge! Depending on the mood of the moment, we’ll either (a) roll the pre-baked cookie balls in spiced sugar like we do for Chewy Pumpkin Cookies, or (b) giving them a quick maple icing when they’re hot out of the oven.
Then comes the hard part. Cool completely before you dive in.
NOTE FROM KATE: This cookie contains two intensely hygroscopic (i.e. water-attracting) ingredients: pumpkin, and sugar. The pumpkin water gets stabilized as Scott described above, and baked, so that part is handled. The sugar in the icing, however, is a bit different. If your weather is humid, AND if you leave the cookies sitting out, the skin on the outside of your lovely icing will pucker up like a bulldog’s face. It’s still good and it still tastes the same, but it can change your expectations a bit.
I found that these cookies refrigerate well, which prevents the icing puckers. But don’t stop there. I also found that smooth icings make this cookie ideal for extra decoration. A colored drizzle line over the off-white icing would look great! Or you could decide that the puckers are a feature rather than a bug, and give the puckered icing a wash of thin, colorful icing for a stone-like effect. (See what I learned in pottery class?) In any case, I doubt the puckered icing will be an issue during the colder months, when our Pittsburgh humidity drops like a rock.
The Golden Rule Of Pumpkin Cookies: Water comes OUT before you make the dough. If you want water, have a glass AFTER they’re baked. Tea is pretty good too, of course.
NOTE FROM SCOTT: So much for my effort to make a pretty swirl in the icing. [Shakes head]
Conclusion
Be they chewy or cakey, pumpkin cookies are a simple, homey, and satisfying project. Half the world will prefer the one, and the other half the other. Make the one that sings to you.
Browned butter, pumpkin, and the child of their love
Pumpkins aren’t just for Halloween!
Pumpkin cookies have become an American classic. European readers who wonder why need do so no longer. The pumpkin flesh inside the dough ensures the cookies hold their texture for a very long time, and also adds a surprisingly elegant flavor with character and depth that play against a gentle spice mix. They are just plain good.
Pumpkin cookies come in two kinds: there is a cakey product similar to many Italian cookies. That recipe will follow in a week or two. We like to add some maple icing to make it extra unique. And then there’s this version: a soft, somewhat chewy drop cookie with a deeper flavor that stands on its own. Both cookies are wonderful for eating out of hand, as well as for coffee and tea. This one you can also dunk!
NOTE FROM KATE: This might be my favorite casual cookie, especially in the fall! But I do have something to add about my new hobby horse: different kinds of flour. A high-gluten bread flour would yield a very different cookie in this case. For comparison, I tried our recipe with a lower-and-weaker-gluten Einkorn flour. They came out flatter, which is not a surprise, but they also had a maltier, more complex taste that complemented the flavor profile. You might not think it, but this is a case where the flour’s actual flavor can make a big difference.
I have now set out to test several of our favorite holiday cookies with Einkorn, sometimes with the addition of rice flour, for those of us who do better on a more low-key gluten approach. Stay tuned.
Hats Off To King Arthur Flour.
King Arthur Flour is one of the oldest continuing millers in the U.S. Some sources say it’s the oldest. But the company really came into prominence for us in the 1980s when it led the nation toward new, higher quality flours and production methods. The company website includes some very good recipes too; including the inspiration for our approach to Chewy Pumpkin Cookies. We’ve tweaked their recipe a bit, but credit should go where credit is due. Here’s a tip of the hat and a courtly bow to Ms. Sarah Jampel. Well done.
The Big Trick To Pumpkin Cookies.
Pumpkin in the dough will keep a cookies moist, but it can also make them downright wet. Even unpleasant. Thus every good recipe for pumpkin cookies starts with an all-important first step: drive off as much water as you can. Wet pumpkin in your dough is B.A.D.
Honor thy father and thy mother. Love thy country. And get the [ahem]ed water out of thy pumpkin before turning it into a dough! Thou hast been warned.
Cakey Pumpkin Cookies start with creamed (beaten until white and fluffy) butter. So that recipe starts by putting a can of pumpkin in a fine sieve and then blotting it with paper towels top and bottom. Stir and repeat until basically dry.
Ms. Jampel found a way to skip that for Chewy Pumpkin Cookies. Dense, chewy cookies often start from melted butter anyway. That was going to be our initial plan. She went one step further and asked, “If water’s the problem, why not brown the butter instead of just melting it?”
Full pause. Execute face palm maneuver. “Doh!”
So we tested it, and here’s your answer: “Brown the butter and your cookies will improve in every way.” Hence recipe instruction #1: Cook enough butter to give you ¾ cup (6 oz = 17t ml) of liquid ambrosia, and then cook the pumpkin in that heavenly substance to drive off all the extra water. Simple.
NOTE FROM KATE: Oh, I totally agree. Especially with Einkorn flour! This approach gives you a nice browned edge and a cookie that’s fabulously rich and yet kind of wholesome at the same time.
NOTE FROM SCOTT: “Kind of wholesome?!” It’s a cookie! Virtue points and cookies are not a good match… [Ow!]… Of course dear. Yes dear. Never yuck the yum.
A Note On Substituting For The Pumpkin
We happened to make both acorn squash and butternut squash over the weeks when this cookie was on the development schedule. Scott claimed all leftovers to test as supplements/substitutes for canned pumpkin.
Cookies From Leftovers, Lesson #1: What you make for dinner has FAR too much moisture to ever blot dry like you’d need to do for the Cakey Pumpkin Cookies. But it will dry out if you toss the leftover squash into browned butter and cook it until the extra water is gone. Leftovers work in the chewy version.
Cookies From Leftovers, Lesson #2: The flavor was exquisite. Better than canned pumpkin by far, at least in my opinion. But the texture was a bit problematic, and required a quick blitz in the food processor or blender. Problem solved. Yes, that creates an extra thing to clean, but c’est la vie.
SNARK FROM SCOTT: Kate thinks the extra flavor wasn’t worth the effort, but she did no complaining about the cookies. You know: the “kind of wholesome” cookies now made extra virtuous by recycling food from an older meal.
NOTE FROM KATE: Make that “very wholesome, and practically a health food.”
Cookies From Leftovers, Lesson 3: It’s a little hard to calculate the volume of pureed squash you’ll end up with, and this is a recipe where volume matters more than weight. It’s smart to have a can of pumpkin ready on the side in case you need to add some in.
Cookies From Leftovers, Lesson 4: I worried about whether the butter in our initial dinner squash would throw off the ingredient ratios for the cookie. It wasn’t a problem.
Add The Spices In Two Parts
The first part of the spice mix goes into the dough during either the cook-the-pumpkin-down stage. If you forget, the mix it all together stage works almost as well. The difference between the two was extremely subtle.
The rest of the spice mix works best as a spiced sugar coating on top of the dough, though again: adding it before baking did not change the result in a really noticeable way. Take your pick of method.
Just Dump And Stir; But Avoid That Egg You’re Thinking About
Step 1: Cook the squash/pumpkin in browned butter. Step 2: Cool enough so your baking soda won’t trigger, and then mix everything together. Simple drop cookie 101.
The only question came with whether to add some egg into that dough. A clear majority of online recipes include at least one and often two egg yolks. We tested both so you won’t have to. The conclusion? Don’t bother.
Whole eggs turn out to be essential for cakey cookies because they help to create the right texture. General baking principles say that egg yolks fit well in denser baked goods. So the idea of using egg yolks for this recipe makes sense. But tests proved that the pumpkin itself adds all the structure you needs. If anything, the egg yolks got in the way.
Working On The Spice Mix
Obsessively compulsive bakers, like a certain husband in a certain house that produces an excessive number of cookies, will insist on making every spice mix from scratch. And long suffering wives in such households learn quickly that rolling ones eyes does nothing to make the process smoother. [The foregoing speaks in generalities only. We, of course, have no direct experience in this regard.]
NOTE FROM KATE: Just go with it, friends. When dealings with husbands who describe commercial spice mixes with words like ‘heresy’, one quickly learns that helpful efforts to streamline a process will only prolong it. If the cookie will be the same anyway, why wait longer than you have to? 🙂
Ahem. But it is only fair to note that this particular mix is a standard pumpkin pie formula downsized to preserve the buttery, caramely, pumpkin notes at the heart of the flavor profile. The actual spices you choose matter less than using the right amount to achieve that balance.
Einkhorn flour (half-spiced) on the lower left. All purpose flour (unspiced) on the upper right
Conclusion
Every person in our household, and our extended group of tasters, had the same reaction to this cookie. It’s homey; it’s comfortable; it couldn’t go better with a cup of coffee; and the presence of an actual, real life vegetable means you can enjoy them for breakfast without any guilt. Or at least maintain a straight face when you say that to a third party. It’s a cookie everyone will like, no one will dislike, and lovers of the genre will view as a masterpiece.
The only drawback comes down to faint praise. Make these for your kids. Make these for the cookie raffle. Make these to share with all and sundry. And make these to keep in the freezer for times when you’ve earned that limited-guilt treat to go along with your coffee. There isn’t a cookie out there that defrosts better.
The only place they might not fit? An elegant holiday tray. Chewy Pumpkin Cookies are folk music played on a fiddle. December Extravaganzas involve fancy violins and string quartets. At least in our house.
The national cookie of Australia and New Zealand; a perfect combination of oatmeal cookie with just the right amount of coconut
Anzac Day is the Down Under holiday of remembrance to honor “the contribution and suffering of all who have served or died in wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations” as part of the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Squish the U.S. Veterans and Memorial Days into one and you’ll have something close to the importance of Anzac Day: a big deal when every school will close, but not quite up to the 4th of July.
The holiday occurs every April 25th in honor of the men lost in the disastrous WWI invasion of Gallipoli, an event also tied to both of the cookie’s[ahem] biscuit’s contending origin stories. The first goes like this: “These were the cookies that mothers and wives tinned up and mailed to their soldier in the field. Isn’t that romantic?” The second says, “These were the cookies sold by the million at post-war fundraisers to raise money for the boys who came home. Could anything be a better symbol of the love and loyalty that isn’t romantic?” I personally suspect the true answer is “both. The recipe predates the war and was indeed sent overseas, but it boomed in the aftermath when something – anything! – just had to be done.
NOTE FROM KATE: The mention of “our boys” may sound old-fashioned in a world where women comprise close to a fifth of enlisted personnel – the number depends on the country (I checked only US, Australia, New Zealand, and Ukraine.) However, did you know that in WW1, well over 2,000 Australian women served overseas? These biscuits didn’t go out only to our boys but to our girls too, and the holiday expressly covers everyone who served, not only those who saw combat. Cheers!
Origins aside, Anzac Biscuits (the British Commonwealth word for “cookies”) have become more firmly entrenched as an Anzac Day treat than they ever were as one for the actual troops, and by now have stretched far beyond the bounds of a single holiday. This is the national biscuit of both the Aussies and the Kiwis, and the “why” couldn’t be any more clear. They’re flat out delicious. They’re simple. They are an ideal treat to make with kids. The proportions multiply like a charm if you want to feed a whole corps instead of the neighborhood bake sale. And the recipe is as close to bulletproof as we’ve ever seen, as witnessed by the fact that even an unfortunate testing mistake turned out so well that we’ve made it an official variation down at the end.
How to describe them… Take a good, solid oatmeal cookie and then give it an elusive hint of coconut that macaroon lovers will adore, and even I (a notorious hater of Demon Hair) can enjoy.
It’s one ace biscuit mate. That’s “a darned good cookie” to you Yanks.
First things first. This cookie is simple, tasty, friendly, lasts well, and is both easy and fun even for bakers who can barely see over the counter. It’s an easy, everyday cookie, not an elegant one, and certainly not extravagant. Don’t lose sight of that essence as I go down all the niggling little details and questions we had to address.
“Lyle’s Golden Syrup” does not mean “Go and buy a special ingredient”
Golden syrup is a product used across the British Commonwealth in much the same way as Karo corn syrup here in the U.S. They behave exactly the same in baking. The only difference is taste. Corn syrup has an all but invisible, vaguely vanilla flavor, while the British product has a pronounced butterscotch/caramel vibe. We ordered a bottle online as part of our research, for something like twice the cost of cheap, supermarket corn syrup. We enjoyed it too, much more than we expected. It’s a fun thing to try if you want to recreate the genuine Australian flavor. But only if authenticity is your goal.
The true spirit of the cookie has more to do with the flavor of childhood than the flavor of golden syrup, and that memory changes with where you grew up. So ask yourself this. What would remind my boy in the army of Home? Honey? Molasses? Maple Syrup? That taste will give your lad (and your little helpers) the true experience of an Anzac cookie even if it would seem a little off for your visiting friend from Sydney. Still good, but not quite right.
The substitution is simple. A 50/50 mix of corn syrup and maple syrup produces a very similar intensity of flavor. Just add them to the melting butter in place of the Lyle’s, and proceed.
“Rolled Oats” is all you need to know.
Do some online research and you will find recipes that stress the importance of using “quick oats” versus “old fashioned oats.” We’re here to tell you it makes no material difference. Use what you have on hand.
The two products aren’t all that different in any event. Rolled oats are made by steaming whole oat seeds (“groats”) and then rolling them flat between two steel cylinders while they are soft. They are then dried, packaged, shipped, and sold. Quick oats are made the exact same way but with cylinders aligned a little closer together to squish the groats that much flatter. It reduces the cooking time on a stovetop. It matters not at all in a cookie. Or at least not in this one.
The amount of oats is as flexible as the rest of this recipe. The basic formula here is 1 cup flour to 1 cup sweetened flake coconut, to 1 cup sugar, to slightly more than ½ cup of melted butter, to X cups of rolled oats. X varies from 1 cup to 2 cups depending on who you ask. We settled on 1½ cups. Do as ye will, they all worked fine and were not very easy to distinguish.
NOTE: “Steel cut oats” a/k/a “pinhead oats” are toasted groats cut into thirds to provide a nicer mouthfeel. I love eating them, but it’s a much bigger production that requires you to put them up to soak on the night before cooking. Steel cut oats would not work as a substitute in this recipe.
There is one weird instruction we still don’t understand
Every recipe we found included a fairly hefty amount of baking soda that has all its lift removed before it goes into the cookie. Some of the recipes mix it with boiling water, which makes it foam up before you add it into with the melted butter and syrup. Others mix it in cold water, and then add the slurry into the pot of still-hot butter and syrup, which makes that foam up instead. [We went with the second because it’s just spectacular enough to delight everyone’s inner child]. Either way, this initial treatment means the baking soda adds basically nothing in terms of lift. So what’s going on?
Theory one was an old trick of using water to dissolve any potential clumps of leavening agent that sifting couldn’t handle, and also ensure the most even distribution possible. But even distribution can’t be the answer in this case because (a) modern baking soda products do not clump, (b) every recipe writer in the world knows enough to specify cold water if you want to make a slurry, and (c) even those who don’t know that rule in advance would get the idea pretty darned quickly once they watched their leavening power fizzle away before the dough ever had a chance to come together.
Could it be a typo, with some particular writer making a mistake? Nope. The same instruction appears in every recipe, including the most up to date ones.
Our current theory has to do with the fact that more alkaline doughs brown a bit better and deeper. And it’s true that Anzac Biscuits have a particularly GBD (chef speak for “golden brown and delicious”) bottom. But even that has some issues, because why go to all that effort for such a relatively minor result?
So it’s still a question without an answer. But do it anyway. It really is fun to watch, and there’s probably a reason even if we haven’t figured it out yet.
The cookies have an amazing flavor balance that works just as well if you play around with the basic concept.
I made a mistake in my first test run. I doubled the amount of butter. Doh! Rookie blunder. The result is the cookie you see on the left:
I think I like them even better. It’s basically a lace cookie with lovely bits of oatmeal, scented by a perfect amount of coconut. #Yum.
We added the salt
We’ve yet to see salt in any recipe from a native Aussie or Kiwi. That said, we greatly preferred the cookies with an invisible bit of seasoning to bring the other flavors out. It’s a modern trick, but one so good that we could not leave it out of the actual recipe
The baking temperatures and times vary a lot, but even this seems to make very little difference
Do some reading and you’ll find many recipes that carefully specify a “medium” oven (350° F = 175° C) for 10-12 minutes. Others are just as clear about using a “moderately low” oven (325° F = 163° C) for 15-20 minutes, with a third group insisting on a “gentle” oven (300° F = 150° C) for 20-25 minutes.
We tested all three. The differences among the three were subtle to say the least. We made a careful side by side comparison of the fresh, same-day cookies and found that (a) the 350° result was hint more crispy, (b) the 325° cookies were right in the middle, and (c) the 300° oven made something that was a little more chewy if you squinted real hard and insisted on finding a difference. All those distinctions more or less vanished overnight. What can I say? Bulletproof.
NOTE FROM KATE: This is a very “moreish” cookie, so when I wanted to nibble the next day, I went after the “ruined” batch that mistakenly cooked at 300° for only 18 minutes. They were, after all, too tender to ship on the day of baking. An obvious failure… right? Not so. Their texture came together overnight into a wonderful, chewy texture. Two days later, even these were hard to tell apart from all the others.
P.S. A gentle hint: try nibbling your cookie with a square of dark chocolate in your other hand.
And if you want a truly authentic recipe:
It took some searching, but we did find a native Australian to use as a sounding board. An extremely generous native, who spent way more time on the back and forth than she probably expected, and even shared her favorite, classic recipe from Australian Women’s Weekly. You can recreate that recipe by using ours with only 1 cup of rolled oats, no salt, and applying a baking time of 20 minutes in a “moderately low” oven (325° F = 163° C). But you want to hear something funny? The magazine’s most current, “best ever” recipe has tweaked the recipe in a couple of ways, and now uses a baking time of 12 minutes at 180° C (355° F).
Why be consistent when you’re already bulletproof?
CONCLUSION:
We get asked for recipe recommendations on a fairly regular basis. It always follows the same general pattern. “We have XYZ going on next [date], and I’d like to bake some cookies. What would you suggest?”
We now have more than 300 carefully tested cookie recipes from all over the world, so it’s not that easy to give a straightforward answer, and we end up asking a series of questions in return. “What are your favorite flavors?” “Who is your audience, and what would he/she/they like best?” “What kind of vibe are you looking for?” “How much time/expertise do you have to put into the project?”
The most common scenario looks something like this. “Oh, I just like plain old cookies. Same for [audience]. I’m just looking for something easy, that we wouldn’t already know. And I’d love to bake them with my [child of choice] when we meet next [date].” I’d be hard pressed at this point to recommend anything other than Anzac Biscuits. They are all of that, and have a great story as well.
Turn your favorite chocolate-and-spice bars into exquisite cookies
“Infinite Temptation” may make more sense in the title than “Infinite Delights.” The testing began with a Chocolate Black Pepper cookie, and the batch looked good as it came out of the oven. Thirteen nice, hefty, 2½” pieces. I tasted one, and liked it. A lot! So I duly brought them out to my beloved, and left them there on a plate so she could try one too. Then I went off do some work on another project.
I strolled back in about 30 minutes later. There were 4 cookies left on the plate. Our pup had been with me in the office. Kate had been left alone with the plate, parked on the sofa with her laptop.
13-1 = 12. 12-4 = the sort of math that wise old husbands forgot how to do a great many years ago. Make that wise and generous husbands, since I immediately ate three more and was kind enough to leave her the last.
Batch #2 got made when we hosted a dinner for our daughter and niece. Miranda had the will power to resist, thanks to a bit too much spice for her taste. Amanda? Amanda ate so many that I don’t have the heart to rat her out in public. Let’s just say that we now have testimony to how well the cookies go with a glass of wine, and with a glass of water, straight out of hand when no one seems to be looking, and with coffee too.
Get it? Got it? Good. These really are all of that; as simple as can be, absurdly rich, and with just enough of a twist to always be unique.
NOTE FROM KATE: One whole pound of chocolate, divided into only four dozen cookies. That’s a lot of antioxidants per cookie! So these aren’t just delicious, they are a regular health food! [Yay! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!]
This is a fairly standard drop cookie, so there’s no need to bore you with the chemistry. Go look at a regular Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Subtract ¼ cup (1¾ oz = 50 g) of flour, and replace it with half a pound (8 oz = 225 g) of melted chocolate. Bing, bang, boom, you’ve got it. The chocolate adds back the structure you lost by removing that bit of flour.
Add another half pound of chopped chocolate (or really good chips), the spice du jour, and you’re done. The only tricky part comes with the baking time. It’s easy to overbake a cookie this dark, and doing means sharing chocolate essence with the air, so we limited the baking time just to be on the safe side. 10-11 minutes instead of the more normal 10-12.
Just make sure to use a good chocolate. There is a full pound of chocolate in every batch. The flavor comes through, and cheap chocolate will show.
NOTE FROM KATE – ABOUT CHOCOLATE: Some of you might’ve seen articles about chocolate with elevated heavy metal levels. Long story short: which risk factor do you want to go with on a given occasion: chocolate or chardonnay?
Development
Chocolate is great. Chocolate is awesome. But the special part here comes from the spice.
Please note that I didn’t actually create this cookie. We publish heritage cookies not mind numbingly good original creations. That said, the accusation has been made and so I feel the need to defend my process.
I began the project looking to highlight a black pepper cookie. Think about it: all those spice snaps, with flavors ranging from across the map, and yet almost no one remembers to try the one spice that’s in basically every kitchen across the breadth of Western civilization. It couldn’t be right… and it wasn’t. Examples abound. And I may get back to them idea later on. But the thought of chocolate black pepper cookies could not be resisted, and thus I went a little sideways.
A Google search for the term “chocolate spice cookies” comes back with a bit more than 68 million results! Italian recipes lead the way, but U.S. versions (like this one) aren’t far behind. There’s one from South Africa with just black pepper… there are a few based on Mexican chocolate… Viennese chocolate pepper cookies (a roll out)… It doesn’t end. This isn’t an original idea, just my version of one that every baker across the world has thought about from time to time.
So what did I do? (A) I elected to go with a U.S.-style drop cookie, and (B) I made it so good that all the other 67,999,999 are stuck with trying to come in second.
NOTE FROM KATE – ON FLOUR: We had a batch where we ran out of AP flour (11.7% gluten) and ended up using pizza flour (14% gluten) for about a quarter of the required amount. Those cookies didn’t spread. They had so much more structural integrity that if you made a little pyramid, it would probably look like a little mountain upon baking. The cookies in the photos are made with regular AP flour, and they did spread some but not very much. This begs the question, would a softer flour yield a more traditional cookie with more spread? Would substituting some starch for 10% of the flour do the trick? If you try it, let us know on our eponymous FaceBook group.
FYI, there was nothing wrong with the pyramidal cookies went came to taste. Their centers remained soft and may even have held on to moisture better. High levels of either cocoa or chocolate will suck moisture out of any baked good, and this is a great example of the phenomenon.
The Spice Part
The first test batch stuck with black pepper. Four teaspoons of it! The result was superb, but it did push right up against that line between “right” and “too much.” The recipe accordingly says 3-4 now. But the big Aha! moment came when we realized that black pepper was just the tip of this particular iceberg.
Go out to your favorite chocolate shop and you’ll find a whole shelf of well spiced options. Chocolate flavored with cinnamon. Chocolate flavored with cinnamon and chili (the Mexican chocolate profile). Chocolate flavored with cayenne, garam masala, ginger, nutmeg, star anise, cloves, gingerbread mix… It’s endless! I mentioned this to Kate and her eyes lit up with an evil gleam.
Every single one of those would work in this recipe. Just compare the potency of your chosen spice to the designated 3-4 tsp. of black pepper in this master recipe, and keep notes so that Version B will be perfect. Bing, bang, boom.
NOTE FROM KATE: I prefer more spice. The cookie doesn’t have to bite back, but higher spice level helps the flavor linger. The pepper version is warming and makes you raise an eyebrow in surprise (use fresh-ground for best effect.) The cinnamon-chipotle one is familiar, with a long and warm finish. Cardamom alone didn’t have the same bite, but the high floral notes carried beautifully, and I plan to see how that spice would play well with black or spicy pepper or to attain an extended note.
One whole recipe gives you approximately 1,200 grams of dough. I divided it into four bowls with 300 grams each, rounding them off to get even weights. (The exact amount of each batch will vary depending how much dough you use for “quality control,” how hard you pack your brown sugar, the size of your eggs, etc.). Then I added proportionate amounts of spices, getting 15 cookies of each per cookie sheet. Label your baking parchment so you know which is which. These are mystery cookies. They all look the same, the first bite keeps you guessing, but by the second bite you know.
NOTE FROM SCOTT: That might even be a fun game. Make several versions with different spices, and then let the party figure out what’s what...
Let us know your favorites so we can give them a try. I might even get to try a few myself before the invisible cookie gremlins get hold of the dozen I left on the plate. Deaf, dumb and blind, thy name is husband of 30+ years.
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!
