A delightful, aromatic, not-too-sweet cookie adored across the entire Middle East
This classic, crispy Middle Eastern tea cookie appears all over the levant, but those from Lebanon are acknowledged to as the best even in this famously competitive part of the baking world. So we set out with a question: what features make them so special, and how do they differ from all the other anise cookies that dominate the Mediterranean shores?
Have oil or clarified butter in the dough rather than plain butter; and
Have a dry, crispy, but well spiced flavor that pairs up perfectly with a cup of potent tea or coffee.
Ladokouloura are the Greek version. They feature olive oil, sesame, and orange. These Yansoon Cookies are all about the anise (“yansoon” = anise in Arabic) with sesame as the supporting note and a mysterious other lurking behind. Kate remains torn, but I like this one better.
NOTE FROM KATE: I love anise. My grandma used to make a low-butter type shortbread that had to age well before being served, and those were possibly my most favorite Christmas cookies. They never caught on with Scott. He fell in love with richer fare, so I never bothered making the “anyzky” just for myself. But maybe I should’ve, because this recipe has reminded me what I’ve been missing! These, too, are leaner than your standard butter cookies, but you won’t miss the fat because of their crispy texture. If anise is your jam, definitely give these a try!
What Do You Need For A Great Yansoon Cookie?
My research uncovered three main points:
Hartshorn a/k/a baker’s ammonia makes a major difference because it creates a unique texture that particularly suits cookies in this category (tea- and coffee biscuits intended for dunking.
Yes, there are online recipes that use baking powder instead, but the authors almost always say that with regret because it just isn’t the same. The baking powder versions lack that characteristic, next-level crispiness.
See that crisp, honeycomb inside? The magic of hartshorn
Vast amounts of anise, and a generous amount of sesame seeds.
Multiple tablespoons seemed like a lot, but testing proved they achieved a nice, balanced flavor – particularly with the mix both ground and whole anise.
NOTE FROM KATE: I believe the amount of air inside this cookie tends to dilute the flavor, which explains why even this level of spice won’t feel excessive.
Variation rules more than consistency after the sesame and anise, but every recipe includes a gentle touch of some aromatic extras to create roundness and nuance.
Which “extras” work best? Sorry folks, but that is the sort of question that generates outright feuds among proud grandmas across the region. I’ve been married for long enough to keep my nose faaaaar away from that kind of debate! Besides, it doesn’t seem to really matter so long as they amount to just an evocative murmur in the background.
Our recipe includes 10 separate ideas for mixing-and-matching, but in the end it’s the sort of thing you should customize to taste.
NOTE FROM KATE: Don’t be afraid of “weird” spices. When I was making my test batch, I opted for a slightly savory take on this cookie: All the anise and lemon oil, but also black caraway (nigella) and cumin. The latter two gave the cookie an earthier, slightly savory vibe. It’s my favorite combination so far. Who knows what you will discover?
Any Shape Will Do
In the end we liked the simpler shapes best. The sticks were amazingly snackable. The rings are just so classic. And others work too if you want to get fancy.
An early test with complicated shapes (and no nigella seed)
The Testing
This recipe involved a huge amount of online research, but our initial recipe was almost dead on point. Testing provoked only one real change: my first effort split the leavening agent 50/50 between hartshorn and baking powder. It was good – very good! – but Kate and I agreed that hartshorn alone worked even better because it creates a more pleasant and crispier texture.
FWIW, the Extra Touch Flavors in that first effort were ⅛ tsp. of orange oil, ⅛ tsp. of lemon oil, and ½ tsp. each of almond and vanilla extract. Why those? I had no citrus on hand for zesting (hence the oils), and no mahlab on hand for roundness (hence the extracts). Native testers confirmed both authenticity and delectability… though Grandma’s were of course said to be better.
Kate went savory with our next batch by adding a 1 tablespoon of nigella seed and ½ tsp. of cumin. The cookies tasted good, but were far too savory, and the main flavors got buried. The updated recipe reduces those amounts to 1 tsp. and ⅛ tsp. respectively. Remember: background hints and murmurs.
The Sugar Level
Read the recipe carefully and you will note a surprisingly low amount of sugar. It’s not a typo, and in fact it is typical of the region. Sweetness gradually increases as you travel from Lebanon up to Greece, increases more as you go west over to southern Italy, and then goes up yet again as you enter into the Italian mountains. It’s a matter of regional taste as much as anything else.
But there’s an added factor for Yansoon Cookies. Think about it: doesn’t anise have a sweet note to go along with its aromatics? Just like citrus flavors, almond flavors, and vanilla? Lebanese bakers acknowledge this by cutting back on the sugar in favor of those more ephemeral equivalents. Trust me on this one. Lebanese Yansoon Cookies are supposed to have relatively little sugar compared to other treats. Don’t mess with this aspect until you have made them as intended. After that it’s baker’s choice.
Brown on top, or brown on the bottom, there must be brown
Crispy, toasty, anise & sesame goodness
Bake Until Brown
The cookie crisps up nicely in 15 minutes, but we liked them better with a bit of browning on top. That meant 17-20, which left them a little too dark on the bottoms. We plan to bake future batches on a silicone mat instead of parchment, or with doubled sheet pans to provide some insulation.
Spinning the trays halfway through helps to prevent distinctive differences between top and bottom, and from side to side. We don’t usually bother, but this time it makes a difference.
A PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTE FROM KATE: One rule of food photography is to never look for the faces. Once you see a face in your photo, you cannot unsee it, and this will force you to change your whole setup. It can add hours of work. However, once you get done shooting your cookies, and just a few are left, and there’s a round, wooden plate, sometimes the cookies just insist. How could I not use this golden opportunity to have some fun? If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.
FUN FACT: Poor Scott expected me to AirDrop him a batch of cookbook-worthy Yansoon Cookie photos. I sent him a batch of cookie emojis first! (No worries, the more appropriate images soon followed.)
Conclusion
Kate and I both like anise in general, but neither of us would qualify as special enthusiasts. I feel the same about sesame (Kate is a bigger fan). And yet we couldn’t be any happier with this new recipe despite the copious use of both. Yansoon Cookies will feature prominently if we’re ever asked to cater a tea party, and won’t be rare in the household cookie jar at any time of the year.
Cookie, pancake or both? Who cares when they’re just plain good?
I’ve got some money to bet! You either (a) know and love Welsh Currant Cookies/Cakes, or (b) have only the vaguest impression that such a thing exists. We fell in the latter category. Yes, I have a number of friends who chimed in with, “Oh, you’ve got to research currant cookies!” So we knew they existed. But I’d honestly never tasted one until we got into the recipe testing.
You may now put us in category #1. They’re wonderful.
NOTE FROM KATE: When this intriguing cookie came up for trials, I was of two minds about it. First, leaves were falling and we were carving pumpkins. For most people, October 31st is just Halloween, cosumes, and candy bars. The holiday originated as Samhain, a Celtic New Year. One Samhain tradition is thanking the warm part of the year for its bounty, and greeting the cold hibernation with its hunting season. Traditional offerings include bannocks, biscuits, or, indeed, cookies. I was all in favor of this concept: we would try a recipe and I would have some genuine griddle cookies to share with the garden.
And yet… pan and griddle means oil. Have I mentioned that we fry have not researched a single fried cookie because I loathe even the idea of the cleanup? If you’re like me, fear not. The amount of butter or oil is minimal, and these curiously enticing cookies are well worth the effort.
The brits have a wonderful word that catches the essential appeal of Welsh Currant Cookies/Cakes: they are moreish. It means they’re one of those foods that don’t taste “special,” but trigger that mysterious need to just keep noshing until there is nothing left in range. Simple, tasty, accessible, and fun.
“But are they a cookie or a pancake?” That’s a whole other debate. They have one foot firmly planted on each side of the line. Thus their assignment into our category for Not Quite A Cookies. Another perfect description.
To a naturalist “currants” means one of two species in the genus Ribes, both of which produce small, round berries that look like itty bitty grapes (which are in the unrelated genus Vitus). There’s Ribes rubrum, which can be red, pink, or white (my favorites are the classic reds), and then there’s Ribes nigrum, the black currant species favored by our daughters. Kate’s favorite would be Ribes uva-crispa a/k/a Gooseberries.
Red currants have that classic sweet/tart flavor profile you find in currant jam. The black ones have a unique, musky flavor. Gooseberries are sort of like a sour blueberry with the size and texture of a very firm grape. All three are delicious once you acquire the taste. Heck, we grow them all in our yard! But they’re only good when eaten fresh or turned into some kind of jam, preserves, or compote.
HISTORICAL NOTE: America has a fascinating history of actively destroying these crops. It happened because currants and gooseberries are required species for the spread of blister rust, a fungal disease capable of wiping out entire forests of white pine. White pines were a major U.S. natural resource in the early 20th century, so both state and federal authorities felt compelled to fight it off. The easiest solution? Eradicate the vector. And so they did. Currants and gooseberries disappeared from American soil for many decades, and are only now making a comeback due to the fact that resistant white pines have evolved to take over the forests. Mostly. Ribes of all kinds are still illegal in Maine and several other states.
Getting back to the point, culinary “currants” are not currants at all. They are miniature grapes that dry into extra small raisins, which are then sold under names such as “Corinthian grapes,”Zante raisins,” and “Zante currants.”
ANOTHER HISTORICAL NOTE: Those names have their own history worth reading about. The grape varietal originated in Greece and became a significant export crop. The main shipping point was the city of Corinth, a major seaport in the country’s northeast. The actual farms were, and largely still are, located in the Greek southwest, on an island called Zakynthos f/k/a Zante. Hence the descriptive words Corinthian and Zante. The name “currants” gets used because the berries aren’t much bigger than actual currants.
Those miniature raisins are what the recipe refers to. We’ve never had a problem finding them in any large supermarket.
Research showed surprising consistency in the ingredients and amounts. The dough contains (by weight):
3 parts flour;
1½ parts butter, lard, or shortening (which you can stretch to 2 parts if you want);
1 part sugar;
1 part Zante currants (see above);
1 part egg combined with dairy (buttermilk, soured milk, yogurt, whole milk, etc.); and
A surprising amount of baking powder, with some nutmeg and grated orange zest to tie it all together.
Yes, there are some bakers who view the orange zest as an option rather than a requirement, and I’m sure that most of them are perfectly nice people, but in this case they are wrong. You’ll see. ‘Nuff said.
Those proportions vary a bit from recipe to recipe, but never by enough to change the basic pattern in a fundamental way. It’s so consistent that I now believe old country Grandmas passed the recipe down more or less as follows: “Use these proportions and then vary according to taste.”
If it’s good enough for Grandma, it is good enough for you and me.
The method varies more than the ingredients. Our recipe adopts the most common, cut-in-the-butter approach. Almost as many recipes use a creaming method, and more than a few call for melted fat. We didn’t bother to try them all because the message is clear. Pick whatever method you want so long as it gives you a rollable dough.
Yes, that’s right: a dough. Pancake batter has much, much more liquid in it than what you use to make Welsh Currant Cookies. It really does feel and act like a cookie dough, albeit one with too much leavening to yield a normal cookie texture.
Roll to ¼” thick, and cut out rounds or other basic shapes
The dough holds its shape surprisingly well, but you want to stick with basic shapes nevertheless. We tried making a few animal shapes in addition to rounds, hearts, stars, and the like. The problems occurred halfway through the cooking process, when we had to flip each cookie/cake over. The animals inevitably lost their heads, tails, and/or legs. Feel free to try, but we will stick to the basics.
Cook on a skillet or griddle
Up to now we’ve had cookie technique in making the dough; cookie technique in the rolling; and more cookie technique in the cutting. From here on it looks much more like a pancake. Heat a skillet or griddle over a medium-low flame just like you would for pancakes, butter/oil it as you would for pancakes, and then cook the cut-outs as if they were miniature pancakes; i.e., until both sides are a light, golden brown. The exact timing will vary tremendously because of tiny factors ranging from the color and weight of your pan/griddle, to the thickness of your cookie and the fraction by which your flame leans toward medium- or low heat. You’ll be fine if you exercise a bit of touch and cooking experience, especially since (a) the ones that go too far will still taste great, and (b) a dusting of powdered sugar will cover all sins.
What you get will taste like a raisiny, not-too-sweet cookie with the texture of a pancake. Absolutely delicious, and incredibly moreish.
NOTE FROM KATE: Just like with pancakes and crepes, griddle cookies take its own bit of practice. A few of my observations are as follows:
SIZE MATTERS: Both of the pan, and of the cookie. Every pan holds heat differently, and a larger and thicker cookie will require more time.
CONTROL YOUR HEAT: A relative of the pie crust, the raw cookie will soften if left waiting in the hot kitchen for too long. Pop the sheet in the fridge between pan-batches in order to retain cookie shapes. As the cookies hit the pan, they will want to set, not burn. They will warm up and turn flaccid. For an easy and cooperative flip-over, use a tool the width of the cookie (offset spatula works well) and make sure its bottom is set. It will be darker than you think it should be.
ENJOY THE PROCESS. This is a very zen, in-the-moment activity as compared to more precise baking. Imperfections happen. Eat them.
Note the inside texture. Just like a very firm pancake.
Shelf Life
Even moreish cookies end up having leftovers now that our nest is emptying out. We stored those leftovers in an open bowl, an airtight container on the counter, and an airtight container in the fridge. None were as good on Day 2 as they’d been on Day 1, but they didn’t actually go stale. They just went meh. And they stayed at that same level of meh day, after day, after day. More than that, meh turned right back into yum as soon as we refreshed the cookie/cakes on a pan/griddle or through a few seconds in the microwave.
LAB REPORT FROM KATE: Side-by-side testing has shown that a fresh-made and frozen cookie, when brought to room temperature, will taste just as good upon thawing as a fresh-made cookie cooled to room temperature. Furthermore, these cookies don’t go stale as much as they simply dry out. Older ones are just fine with coffee or tea as-is, or you can revive them with a judicious 5-15 second microwave burst.
So the moral of the story is this: Welsh Currant Cookies keep like pancakes. They change very quickly, but they also store extremely well, especially when frozen, and will taste basically as good as new once you get them warm again.
Conclusion
How good is this “cookie?” We have a local diner near our house called Pamela’s (one of a Pittsburgh chain). They are famous for their hotcakes. The owners were even invited to the White House to make brunch for the first family! They are also good people we like enough to treat as our go-to place for a diner breakfast.
I’ve already stopped by with samples and a recipe, and will almost be surprised if they don’t leap at the chance to add Welsh Currant Cakes to the menu after doing some testing of their own. So my bottom line answer is this. They are good enough that some of you readers will bless this article for a great many years to come, and your heirs for that much longer.
Maple shortbread sandwiched around a not-too-sweet maple buttercream.
Alfajores: the legendary South American cookie of childhood formed from two tender, shortbread wafers that sandwich a rich caramel (dulce de leche) filling. Add a bit of maple flavor to the shortbread part, replace the filling with a rich maple buttercream, and you get a cookie that’s just as good, and almost equally loved across its range in North America.
Exceptionally pretty, and featuring a deep sweetness that hovers right on the line of “children adore it” and “adults can too,” this regional specialty is going to find its way into your repertoire and simply won’t leave once you see the children in your life squealing with glee. Just be aware that no child on the planet can resist snitching a few from a low lying jar, which means you’ll have to carefully be looking in another direct.
Perhaps with a plate of your while sipping nice cup of tee or coffee.
A NOTE FROM KATE: The cookie itself isn’t particularly sweet without the filling, which is a bit too sweet for my personal taste. Now, to be fair, this filling grew on me with every tweak. Still, my European alter-ego would like to point out that you don’t have to use all the sugar in the buttercream recipe.
I do agree that Maple Sandwich Cookies are a lovely addition to the fall repertoire, sans “pumpkin spice,” and make an enticing visual statement for both kids, and kids at heart.
A few years back we published a wonderful recipe for easy Maple Drop Cookies. This is the upscale, extra pretty version: tender, maple flavored cookies sandwiched around an intensely maple filling. What could go wrong?
The answer proved to be nothing, though it did take a little bit of fidgeting to get the details just, exactly right.
The Cookie Part
Shortbread cookies a/k/a butter cookies mostly follow a standard set of proportions. Here’s a alphabetical list of examples normalized to the same two sticks of butter in this recipe:
Testing showed that we liked this cookie just a bit more tender than a standard Butter Jelly, but it was a close call. Feel free to substitute the specified mix of flour (2½ cups) and starch (½ cup) for a straight 2¾ cups of flour.
As to thickness, keep them thin if you want to make sandwich cookies and a little more robust if you want to skip the filling. Just remember to increase the baking time too! Thicker cookies need to bake longer, especially with doughs like this with a decent amount of starch. Starches stay pasty on the tongue until the inside gets hot enough to break down. The magic temperatures are about 130° for tapioca, 140° for potato starch, and 145° for cornstarch. We prefer tapioca because you can’t exactly probe your cookies with an instant read thermometer. The lower degradation temperature to provides an extra safety margin against pastiness. Note: We have no trouble finding affordable tapioca starch at any good Asian grocery.
The cookies are done when the edges begin to brown, which also means the bottoms will be what the pros call GBD (Golden Brown & Delicious). Those toasty notes pair exceptionally well with the maple and vanilla flavors inside the cookie itself.
NOTE FROM KATE: The GBD bottoms work just fine for thin-rolled cookies. IMHO, I wouldn’t mind getting the thicker, molded-pattern ones a bit toastier. Giving them an extra minute or two will make sure that all the starch is properly degraded by heat. This is especially important when you place a tray of molded cookies in the fridge. In fact, I think a slight hint of darker, well-toasted edge would play well against the sweet buttercream filling.
NOTE FROM SCOTT: I completely agree. And for those who don’t know, refrigerating molded cookies can help to keep the pictures clear.
Next up: fancy touches, which turned out to be a lot of fun. This kind of shortbread holds its shape exceptionally well. They’re perfect for really fine cutouts on the sandwich caps, and even for patterns stamped into the dough. Have a look!
FWIW, we had more success stamping the dough first and then cutting it out. It would have been an ideal situation for using a patterned pin if we had one.
NOTE FROM KATE: This cookie holds its stamp well, but it didn’t do as well with very deep, molded cavities. It won’t be as forgiving as gingerbread, so make sure the dough is at a pleasantly cool temperature. You will also want to clean your molds between every stamping (we have a bowl of oil with a toothbrush, a bowl of starch with a powder brush, and a skewer on duty between each stamping.) For this cookie, it worked well to lightly dust the dough as well as the lightly-oiled mold. The type of your mold will also make a difference. Unlike with a hand-carved wooden mold or stamp, a laser-cut mold with sharp-angled features tends to cut all the way through the dough when pressed too hard. Use a gentle hand. In a larger production situation, I would roll the dough directly on the parchment, stamp the shapes, cut the rounds, and then remove the excess for reuse.
The Filling
Our standard buttercream filling uses half a stick of butter to three cups of powdered sugar, with whatever flavors you want added in. It’s dead reliable, thick enough to hold its shape, easy to thin as desired with a bit of milk or other liquid, and the heat characteristics are easy to understand. Butter gets soft at around 65° F (18° C), and so do these fillings.
In this case we started by simply adding in some maple syrup as the liquid. The texture was spot on, but the syrup made the filling a lot too sweet and a little too loose . Solution for the first: reduce the amount of syrup and add in some maple extract. [See Note below] This came close, but still edged over the line into the too-sweet-for-grownups realm.
Have three standard solutions for something that’s a bit too sweet: add salt, add acid, or add something bitter. Salt came first. I upped the amount from a healthy pinch all the way to ¾ tsp. That did the trick for me, but Kate said she could taste it. ⅔ tsp. proved to be the [ahem] sweet spot.
But the filling was still awfully sweet, and toed right up to the children-only line! It needed some extra help. Lemon didn’t seem to fit, so I decided to whisk in a tablespoon of cream cheese. Perfect! The extra mass tightened the filling that essential bit, and the mild acidity was enough to bring the sweetness under control.
TECHNICAL NOTE: Our go-to means of adding bitterness are molasses (also acidic), coffee, and chocolate. The molasses was tempting, but in the end we worried that it would have tried to steal the scene instead of playing a supporting role. [Additional Note: That observation all but demands a comment about molasses being a ham, but three decades of marital wisdom suggests that I might not get away with it. So never mind.]
NOTE FROM KATE: He thought he got away with it. That’s…kind of adorable, and really sweet! Just like these cookies!
Concerning Maple Syrup…
“Pancake syrup” is basically corn syrup with coloring and maple extract. I have nothing against that on some philosophical level, but it would substitute for extract rather than syrup in baked goods. All the cookies we make use real maple syrup.
But that doesn’t end the story, because real maple syrup comes in several grades that basically correspond to the time of year it’s tapped out of the tree. Think of it as analogous to the change from veal to beef, or lamb to mutton: the syrup becomes progressively darker and more intense as the season moves on. We would have loved to try some extra-dark syrup in these cookies, with less extract, but simply don’t have access. If you do, please do, and let us know the results.
Note that syrup “grades” don’t really help because it is an industry term. The only law on point comes from the USDA’s Grade A vs. Processing Grade vs. Substandard. You and I never see anything but Grade A according to that definition.
The industry used to divide the color/flavor lines using the same letter grades with different meanings, going from lightest (Grade A) to darkest (Grade C), but that made consumers perceive the darker colors as inferior. As of this writing the industry has adopted color descriptions instead of grades. Vermont’s industry page describes them like this:
Golden color with delicate taste
Amber color with rich taste
Dark color with robust taste [used in this testing]; and
Very Dark color with strong taste.
The Canadians follow suit, though they often grade by “colour” instead of “color;” except when marketing to the U.S.
Storage
Unfilled cookies should keep for a solid week in a cookie tin or other airtight container. Freeze for longer storage.
Filled cookies, and unused filling, will start to get soft if kept above 60° F (18° C), which equates to a chilly room. We prefer to use the refrigerator for convenience, but take extra air to have an airtight container lest the filling absorb flavor from some garlicky pasta in the bowl next door.
I believe the filled cookies can also be frozen, but haven’t tested it yet.
CONCLUSION
That’s a lot of detail, but it all adds up to common sense for any experienced baker. The recipe is for a simple, maple flavored shortbread, and an even simpler maple buttercream. Put the two together and you have maple nirvana. There’s a whole lot worse you can find in this world of ours. And very little that tastes a whole lot better.
P.S. We had some filling left over from the photo shoot, and a few Gingerbread cookies from another project. I combined the two on a lark and… Goodness Gracious and My Oh My! This maple filling loves, Loves, LOVES to be paired with spice cookies! It’s so good that I may well sneak some onto this year’s extravaganza tray. Make an extra batch of Ginger Snaps without the sugar crust, combine with the maple filling… Oh yes. This could definitely be a thing.
Dense nutty shortbread with an apricot filling and chocolate coating. What’s not to love?
“There is a tide in the affairs of bakers. Which, taken at the flood, leads to cookies of legend.”
Williamnot Shakesthepan, ‘Julius Eater’
The bakers of Imperial Austria were always good, but immortality escaped them until the creation of a series of desserts in the 1800’s. Yes, Linzer Tarts date back to at least the 1600’s. But nailing it? Pre- and post-French Revolution. One example is Sachertorte, created in 1832; a dense, extremely chocolatey layer cake with a generous amount of apricot jam on the inside. Ischler Cookies are another.
This particular cookie was created for Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1849 at the spa town of Bad Ischl. Look with care and you’ll see a marriage of the first two; the buttery, nutty, Linzer shortbread sharing the stage with apricot filling and dark chocolate counterpoints.
Exquisite.
As always, skip to the bottom if you are only here for the recipe. Most of this article concerns the choices we made to get there.
MORE A “PROFILE” THAN A “RECIPE”
A search for “Ischler Cookies Recipe” yields somewhere in the area of 2,000 recipes in English alone, and another 10,000 in German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and any number of other languages. Plus books, of course. I’ve scanned maybe a hundred in all, with close study of several dozen, and all the work done on ours. On that authority I feel confident about the [lack of a] target definition:
A sandwich cookie made from a tender, nut-heavy shortbread;
An apricot filling, which often gets varied in the name of creativity;
And a densely chocolate element, which can take any form that human ingenuity can contrive.
This cookie has been around for more than 170 years, and the recipe now has all but infinite variations. If you insist, I will admit to a belief that the original cookie used a lot of hazelnuts, had an apricot filling, and was enrobed in chocolate, but that is based purely on inference and guesswork. Why hazelnuts? Because it pairs so very well with chocolate. Why enrobed instead of sandwiched? Well, if I was a pastry chef, and I wanted to impress an Emperor, that would be my default.
Sensible? Yes. A statement of fact? Not exactly.
So here’s the bottom line. Our version of this recipe is as good as any, better than most, and is 100%, capital-R Right. But that doesn’t mean that other recipes are capital-letter Wrong. They aren’t. We’re looking at a flavor profile, not a fixed recipe. Everything is “right” so long as it has the nutty shortbread, jam filling, and distinct hit of chocolate.
THE NUTTY SHORTBREAD
I spent years refining the proportions in my nutty Linzer Tart dough to perfection, and there is no reason to mess with success for this one. Here is the basic formula:
≈ 1 cup (7 oz = 185 g) of fine nut meal, ideally from gently toasted nuts;
2 sticks (1 cup = 8 oz = 225 g) of butter;
2 cups (10 oz = 185 g) of flour;
One large or XL egg yolk;
A small amount of baking powder; and
A healthy pinch (¼ tsp.) of salt.
Tests pushed us to add an extra half cup of flour to the dough, plus a little beyond that for oily walnuts, but that’s basically where we ended up.
What Nuts To Use? Any. Most modern American recipes tend toward almonds as the nut of choice. Modern recipes from Austria tend to use hazelnuts (filberts). The Hungarians often favor walnuts. Kate and I usually recommend a mix of nuts, but it had to be tested. We did so. And the result was clear: It doesn’t really matter.
NOTE FROM KATE: I figure the preferred nut may have also been a function of availability. The Hungarian versions favor walnuts, which they grow locally. In Bohemia (and I believe Austria) you can find hazelnuts bushes growing prolifically near every village, much to the delight of both youngsters and squirrels. So they make more sense for where I grew up. That said, the 1924 Sandtnerova cookbook uses almonds for almost everything, including her version of Ischler Cookies, and Austria sat in the middle of all these trade routes during Imperial times. Thus the Bad Ischl bakers would have had ready access to all three.
The photos in this post vary from examples that are pure walnut through pure hazelnut, 2:1 hazelnuts and almonds, and 3:1 hazelnuts and walnuts. They look the same, and while a devoted taster can tell one from the other (especially when the nuts are toasted), every variation was just as delicious as the last. So choose what you wish according to personal taste, budget, and pantry.
“What about oddball nuts like pecans, peanuts, macadamia, etc.?” Yes, that’s valid too. Look at the definition! “Nut meal” it says, and that is all it means. You’ll just be making another of those infinite and delicious variations. The only change is the obvious one: walnuts and other oilier nuts create a looser dough, which you’ll need to compensate for by adding some extra flour during the rolling phase. (NOTE FROM KATE: Macadamias would be interesting. They are the oiliest nut in existence and would produce a very short dough. I can already taste a Hawaiian take on the Ischler, with a tropical jam filling and a white chocolate coating on top!)
What Texture of Nuts? This one is more defined. Use nut meal nut flour, without any significant chunks of the sort you’d want if we used the word “chopped.” Yes, many people prefer to have little pops of crunchy nuts in their cookies. And yes, it adds some texture while also being convenient. After all, that is what you can get from a food processor. It just isn’t capital-R Right, because food processors did not exist in 1849. Bakers used table mounted grinders instead. Kate’s Grandma Kandler had one that looked a lot like this:
Image shows a 1930’s version from the Czech company Porkert
(NOTE FROM KATE: Scott has this part only half right. Grandma used one like this for poppy seed, and only occasionally for walnuts (which she used in her zimtsterne-like meringue sticks). She didn’t have a nut grinder for hazelnuts or the oh-so-rare almonds. Those she ground on the Czech equivalent of a box grater, one nut at a time, while listening to the radio and cursing. That works fine if you use the small slicing openings, but it’s laborious and does a job on your manicure.
You might ask, “Why didn’t she have the menfolk do it?” The answer is twofold: 1. The menfolk were busy pounding regular sugar into powdered sugar using a brass mortar and pestle. 2. She didn’t trust the menfolk not to eat the nuts. They were hard to obtain during the product shortages of the communist era, and she often had to visit numerous stores with hours-long lines just to get two small baggies of hazelnuts. For a great tool we can use now, keep reading.)
We have gotten by for 30 years with a much smaller and more familiar device:
Image shows the Oxo Rotary Grater, often used for Parmesan cheese but just as effective with nuts.
Both of those grinders inhale whole nuts and breathe out either fine shreds or powder, depending on which grating blade you insert. They do not produce “chopped” nuts. Thus we believe that (a) nut meal is almost certainly the texture used in the 1849 version of this cookie; (b) it’s a texture we prefer to eat; and therefore (c) it is the texture this recipe recommends. [NOTE: Almond flour and meal have started to become available in U.S. markets. Hazelnut and walnut meal are a lot harder to find, at least in 2022.]
As for chocolate inside the dough… see below.
Can I add some spice to the dough? Absolutely! Linzer Tarts have a hint of spice, and these can too. Just be judicious. Ischler Tarts have a strong, three-legged theme that every good recipe needs to balance; nutty shortbread, chocolate, and jam. Spices that enhance this balance do nothing but help. Spices that add a fourth layer will throw things awry. We didn’t do a whole lot of experimenting along these lines, but experience suggests that the best approach would focus on a spice that works with your central nuts. E.g., walnuts love to pair with ground cloves and coffee; vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg pair to perfection with hazelnuts; almonds get along cinnamon or an oddball spice like pepper.
THE APRICOT FILLING
Yes, apricot. We defunded the cookie police before publishing this article, so no one’s going to arrest you for using something else. There are, however, a number of reasons to start with this particular fruit:
Apricot and chocolate are a classic Austrian combination, as shown by the much loved Sachertorte;
Raspberry has its own cookie in Linzer Tarts; and
All accounts seem to agree that the original, 1859 recipe did indeed use apricot and not any other fruit.
QED.
Apricot cookie fillings come in two basic versions. The first is slow-cooked puree or compote a/k/a apricot butter, povidla, lekvar, etc. We prefer these fillings for recipes that bake the filling, but with this one – filled after the fact – we recommend the easier route; a modified apricot jam.
Jam fillings present two issues, both of which are easy to solve. #1 is excess moisture that can soak into the cookies and limit their lifespan. #2 is availability, since our stores only carry “apricot preserves,” and that product has enough chunks to detract from your ideal result.
Cookies made with unstrained preserves. See how the bits of fruit hold the two halves apart? It doesn’t hurt the taste at all, but it’s less perfect than what you can do with only a little more effort.
Same cookies, same presentation, but without the chunks of fruit.
We prefer this cookie with a smooth jam instead, and ideally one that’s just a little drier. You can address both concerns by (a) heating preserves until loose, (b) pushing the hot goo through a sieve, and then (c) spiking it with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice or apricot brandy for that certain je ne sais quoi. Apricot perfection with just the texture you want.
I did try to sieve the jam without preheating, hoping to avoid the danger of handling something so hot. Alas, even a coarse sieve wouldn’t do the job. Preserves are just too hefty, and it did nothing about the moisture concern. Thus you are hereby warned about the danger, and we recommend doing it anyway.
THE CHOCOLATE
Yes, a chocolate component is essential. That is what separates this cookie from being a mere variation on Linzer Tarts. Same genus; different species.
What kind of chocolate? That is a matter of some debate. Look at those 12,000 recipes on line and you’ll see that different bakers try to incorporate the chocolate element in every possible way. And I do mean every. We found recipes based on:
Grated or melted chocolate mixed into the dough. This produces a wonderful cookie on its own merits, and it’s the simplest approach.The drawback? It doesn’t have the same ‘Wow’ factor as a chocolate filling or topping, and it adds flavor without texture.
Cocoa powder mixed into the dough. Again, it’s a wonderful cookie on its own, but it lacks in both Wowness and mouthfeel.
A chocolate ganache filling paired with the apricot filling. This is the most common solution in American recipes because it’s simple, tasty, has a great mouthfeel, and is easy to pack. The drawback? It looks good but not great, and too much of either layer will make your filling squirt out the sides.
A ring of chocolate ganache filling with the apricot placed inside. This is a neater variant on #2, because the piping process enforces exactly the sort of filling-discipline you need. The downside? “Piping” is #1, because many people find it fussy and hard. Visual appeal comes in again as #2. There’s nothing wrong with looking at chocolate, but seeing the jam adds a flash of appealing color. #3, I think it messes too much with the balance of flavors, though Kate disagrees. (NOTE FROM KATE: I have a higher tolerance for bitter than Scott, and find the ring of darker chocolate ganache very pleasant. This is especially true for when used with the sweeter chocolate fondant icing – see below. Also, YMMV.)
Chocolate ganache spread or piped over the top. A great compromise, but the ganache can look a little messy if you don’t pay attention, and it makes for a very sticky top. There’s no way at all you could hope to pack it in a tin. Right idea; wrong solution.
Chocolate buttercream cake frosting piped on top. Think of these sandwich cookies as a tiny cupcake made from shortbread instead of batter. Now go ahead and frost that cupcake. Taste: check. Texture: check. Appearance: check. The drawbacks? (A) It moves us away from “cookie” and into “confection,” (B) no one could even dream of packing them in a tin, and (C) there are better answers yet to come.
A chocolate glaze. Looks fine and packs like a charm, but glazes never have the desired mouthfeel, and almost always lack something on the flavor side too.
Melted chocolate a/k/a why get weird? Alas, but the texture is wrong. The cookies wants a coating that feels dry to the fingers, but gives way to the teeth without any effort. The ‘snap’ of actual chocolate turns from asset to issue in this particular case.
Chocolate melted with butter, and then either poured over the top or used as a dip. This is an ideal solution for taste, appearance, and texture, but it also softens at room temperature, which makes it a mess to eat and impossible to ship unless you heroically cut a piece of parchment as protection.
Coverture a/k/a chocolate melted with extra cocoa butter, used as either a coating or a dip. Ding! This is the best solution of all… if you keep cocoa butter on hand, or have access to specialty stores that sell ready made coverture. If you don’t…
A pourable chocolate fondant used as either a coating or a dip. Ding ding! We have finally arrived at our #1 solution for everyday pantries! Looks perfect; thick enough to give an ideal, luscious mouthfeel; dries enough to pack in a tin without worry; and the flavor is exactly as you want, since it can be varied to taste. It’s even pretty easy… or would prove to be after we figured it out.
Want chocolate icing that flows over your cookies, settles into a coating with some heft, is dry to the touch, but melts in your mouth? Pourable fondant is where it’s at.
THE ICING ODYSSEY
You may find this hard to believe, but we really did try every one of the first nine approaches (other than the frosting). See this parallel article on coverture and pourable fondant. Which one do we recommend? It’s chocolate, people! Chocolate wrapped around rich, nutty shortbread that encases a lively hit of bright apricot filling! Don’t stress. This is the very definition of a no-lose situation.
If you keep cocoa butter on hand, go with coverture. If you don’t, whip up a pourable chocolate fondant.
“But should I pour the coating over? Dip the cookies in? Cover only part of the cookies? Apply decorative stripes or some such?
[Sigh] Do what you prefer. We happened to be testing these just in time for Thanksgiving, which led to an extended family vote in favor of coating only the tops with as smooth a layer as possible. Hence the photos. But we can promise that all the others work too. Once again, you cannot lose, so do not stress.
CONCLUSION
Ischler Cookies can hold their own on any cookie tray in the world. They really are that good, and that full of history and heritage.
Are they actually better than all the other cookies in the world? Well, that one’s up to you. They call it taste for a reason, and I cannot speak for yours any more than you can speak for mine. But I can promise you this. Wise men and women will do a lot of careful tasting and re-tasting before reaching any decision.
“I better have just one more to be sure…”
A FEW FINAL NOTES
On storage:
The dough freezes as well as any other so long as you seal it in plastic wrap or an equivalent.
Baked halves keep as well as any others. Just remember that they are fragile, and do best in an airtight container like a cookie tin.
Baked and coated halves freeze well too, but coverture can sometimes develop a whitish bloom (which doesn’t alter the taste, but does detract from their beauty). Fondant made with actual chocolate can do that too, but less so. Fondant made with only cocoa powder doesn’t mind freezing at all.
Filled cookies freeze ‘okay,’ but not ‘well’ because the added moisture of the jam creates a number of potential problems. Better to freeze before filling.
On lifespan:
Ischler Cookies are a little hard if eaten right after they’re filled; remain perfect for up to a week if kept in a tin; and then go downhill.
A recipe direct from the great-grandma of Czech cuisine
Kate grew up in Prague, which explains the Czech accent in so many of our recipes. This one is so utterly Czech that even native Praguers will be a little stunned. Not because of the recipe itself, though it really does make a fantastic, ultra-buttery thumbprint cookie with a unique technical twist. It’s the history that makes this cookie special.
The published recipe dates back to the landmark 1826 book by Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová (a/k/a M.D. Rettig), a name that every Czech knows, but also tends to discount. Non-natives may want to think of her as a much loved national Grandma; the old lady you treasure because she snuck you cookies, held you in her lap, and taught you how to handle pets, children, and husbands with a firm but loving hand. It’s an archetype, right?
But here’s the thing. Mrs. Rettigova has held that role in the cultural heart for 200 years and counting.
The key characteristics of a proper Thumbprint Cookie are:
An easygoing flavor that will pair with your jam based filling;
A tender, vaguely chewy, fine grained texture; and
Just enough structure to keep a clear dimple in the center when baked as a ball with a deep hole poked inside.
Mrs. Rettigova’s Dimple Cookies (“důlkové koláčky”) feature exactly the texture and structure you want, but also have a flavor that positively screams of BUTTER!!! Butter that pairs extremely well with fruit flavors of every kind, of course. Or can stand on its own.
The Key Trick: Combine Softened Butter With Clarified Butter
It’s a fairly simple procedure. (1) Beat a generous amount of softened butter with an equal amount of clarified or browned butter until smooth, (2) beat in egg yolks one at a time, and then (3) mix in the dry ingredients. All very simple, and totally brilliant.
Our article on Ghraybee, the Middle Eastern shortbread, details my years of frustration trying to incorporate browned butter into a shortbread cookie. The problem drove me mad, and I finally had to settle for simply using it as an icing. The delicate balancing act of Ghraybee offers one way around that diliemma. This cookie is the European solution I never managed to crack.
Yes, it’s also 200 years old and counting. [Sigh]. Don’t remind me. But look at this way: I’ve got a choice between feeling elated to have the answer, or ashamed that I didn’t think of it myself. Thanks all the same, but I’m going with Door #1.
THE ONLY QUESTION: NARROW HOLES OR WIDER HOLES?
There isn’t much else to add, since we’re offering the recipe basically unchanged from the original Czech. The only issue we found goes to personal choice. What’s the balance you want between cookie part and jam part? Here are the two options (you can also vote for “in between” of course):
Cookies made with a narrow hole by using only the width of a wooden spoon.
Cookies where the spoon hole was widened out before baking to the size of my (Scott’s) thumb.
The wider your holes before baking, the wider and shallower they will be after baking, with the initial difference enhanced by spreading. It really comes down to what you want. I am a jam-first kind of guy. Kate prefers a bit more balance.
(NOTE FROM KATE: I like the fruity notes of jam to pair with my shortbread without overwhelming it. In the past, I’ve removed excess jam out of an otherwise perfect cookie with a spoon. Psst…don’t tell on me.)
Then there is the final option: make a relatively flat topped cookie and then press a dimple in with your asbestos finger when they are hot out of the oven. Yes, it can give you a mild burn on a sensitive thumb tip. Sometimes you pay for beauty. And yes, you can use a tool like the blunt end of a small pestle; if you have one. Just be sure to act quickly! The cookies get delicate as they cool, at which point your effort to push in a dent will start to cause destruction instead.
P.S. These are cookies you fill after baking. Yes, you can do it in advance, but it serves no purpose. The jam condenses and shrinks as it bakes, while also losing its high notes. Here’s an example:
From the left, apricot filled after, apricot prefilled, strawberry prefilled, and strawberry filled after
I also believe those high notes matter, at least to my taste. Strawberry jam with a tiny hint of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar? Oh yeah. “How to elevate a childhood favorite into maturity in an instant.”
Apricot with a spice (cardamom!), herb (rosemary!), hint of booze (cognac!), or lemon? 1826, meet 2026. It has no end except the bounds of human creativity.
There are plenty of cookies where a cooked fruit filling is the right way to go, especially if you hope to ship them. This is a different critter. Thumbprints are for eating at home, not shipping out. Though nothing stops you from shipping them empty, of course. Even the most inept, kitchen-phobic bachelor can manage to fill a hole with a bit of his favorite jam!
So much for the actual cookie. Now it’s time for the treasure behind the cookie; an absolutely fascinating bit of history and perspective that most people tend to forget.
Again, head to the bottom if you only want the recipe. What follows is all about history, culture, and why you should go out of your way to give this one a try. It has nothing to do with the actual baking
WHO WAS M.D. RETTIGOVA AND WHY WAS SHE SO IMPORTANT?
(NOTE FROM KATE: Scott doesn’t waste a moment to learn something new from history, and this time period was of great interest to him in college.He’s also a professional storyteller, and thus can’t resist a good opportunity to share an interesting tale. Stories, however, are as important as they are interesting. They teach us much about who came before us, and they help shed light upon the things we do today without even thinking about it. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. For our Czech readers, you’ll note a non-Czech slant to Scott’s view of Czech history. Let’s treat pani Rettigova as one singular dot, and for this time, not worry about the seminal “details” that form the rest of the Czech history puzzle. Enjoy!)
Hmmm… Let’s start by setting the scene.The girl who would grow up to become Mrs. Rettigova was born in 1785 to a German speaking, very assimilated family named Artmann. They lived in a 500-person village located in the northern quarter of Imperial Austria that would later become the Czech Republic.
Austria in 1785 was the world of Mozart’s prime: a country heavy with tradition, and organized around an ancient, universally accepted, divinely inspired social order that began with the Emperor and moved on down. Loyalties were more medieval than modern. The ran to your patron, and from him on up to the imperial person. There were no amorphous concepts like a political state or ethnic group with the sole exception of religion, and the hellish wars of the 1600’s had left so deep a mark that smart people did their very best to avoid it. Citizenship and self image had precious little to do with a common language or a common history. Your “team” was your fellow imperial subjects, plain and simple.
(NOTE FROM KATE: this is what I mean about a non-Czech attitude. Those of us who grew up with Czech history will be saying, “But what about Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor and king of Bohemia? What about the Czech lords who elected their own king after the turmoil of the Hussite wars?” Not relevant. In Magdalena’s time, these events were esoteric and forgotten by all but literate historians. That’s the point. If a Czech person wanted to show how worldly and educated they were, they spoke and wrote in German.)
Recall too that Austria, a/k/a the Holy Roman Empire, had been one of Europe’s great powers since the fall of Rome, second only to France and at least the peer of Great Britain. Prussia and Sweden up north had famous armies too, while Spain was a declining but still great power in the far west, and the Ottoman Empire a historic menace to the south. Neither Germany nor Italy existed as a political unit, and no one but wild eyed, fantasizing academics bothered to dream about that kind of unification. They were mere “geographical expressions” as one of the era’s most famous politicians quipped later on.
That was the world this baby was born to enter. The first real stirrings of change occurred in 1792, when she was seven (7) years old. How can I bring home the enormous weight of what was coming down the historical turnpike? Let’s try this:
Imagine what life would be like for a girl in rural Ohio if Communist China suddenly threw off its chains and declared itself to be a new and radical democracy in the model of ancient Athens. That’s a pretty good analogy of what the French Revolution meant to people in the rural villages of central Europe. Or it would be if you could spice that impact up because the current queen and king of “China” happened to be the sister and brother-in-law of your own “President.”
These great events would have been a consuming topic of conversation for the grownups, but only a background noise for our little girl and her daily life. Seven year olds care more about playtime than the storm clouds of war on the horizon.
A few months later the deposed French king and queen tried to flee to Austria, and were recaptured. The revolutionaries had them beheaded in a public square just as she turned five. Monarchs fed to the same guillotine as common peasants! Shocking! But still just loud and urgent grownup talk from her perspective.
Her Emperor immediately declared war on France, Prussia joined in, her local “big kids” started to talk about military careers, and the atmosphere got ever more intense. Children her age would have been sent out of the kitchen, rather than assuming they’d just be bored.
The Reign of Terror began ran from ages 8-9 (the age of a typical American 3rd- to 4th-grader). While that went on, Austria and Prussia used the distraction to launch a joint invasion. It enjoyed enough initial success to make Great Britain and Spain join in for their fair share of the soon-to-be-carcass. Which meant that all of Europe had come together in a loose alliance against divided, self-consuming Revolutionary France. What else could happen but victory, soon and profound?
They all found out as she went the preschoolers started to see her as one of the Big Kids. France rallied enough to bounce the Prussians out of the war, though she managed no more than a desperate draw against Austria. The world went into 1794/95 (age 9-10) with the other Great Powers beginning to close their own nets. Victory still seemed inevitable, however stubborn the French mob had turned out to be. The war’s end, right there on the horizon… only to vanish with the rise of an unknown, undersized, provincial artillery officer who’d grown up on some tiny islet in the sea. Over the next half decade Napoleon Bonaparte took over the French command in Italy, proceeded to disgrace army after army, finally driving on to dethrone the Pope himself. Absolutely historic routs, which kept piling up until a final French triumph at the soul crushing Battle of Marengo in 1800. That year, Magdalena turned 15 and could start to be viewed as marriageable.
From here we can speed up a bit. Her Emperor and the victorious Napoleon declared an uneasy truce. Everyone knew it was more of an ‘armistice’ than a ‘peace,’ however, and so it proved. War renewed a few years later, only to end when she was 20, with Bonaparte’s legions sweeping across the continent to humble, humiliate, and crush the combined armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia. Every king but the Tsar was forced to surrender, and he would have too if Moscow wasn’t 1,200 miles (2,000 km) away from Vienna, off in the middle of nowhere.
(NOTE FROM KATE: it’s well-known that Napoleon’s armies looted a lot of art from Czech castles and churches. It is less known that they had absconded with half the nascent nation’s supply of vowels. This is why Czech has many words with only one vowel in them, and some with none at all! But look at French. They have so many, they can’t decide which ones to keep silent.)
Austria, along with everyone else, became a grudging vassal state, and the tide of revolutionary ideas began to flow from Paris unimpeded. The main treaties establishing a new world order were signed when Magdalena was 22 and 24, respectively. She married at the age of 23.
THE CHANGING LIFE OF THE NEW MAGDALENA D. RETTIGOVA
Magdalena wed an aspiring, politically active attorney named Jan Alois Sudiprav Rettig in 1808. The marriage, even now, seems to have been a love match as well as a deeply felt partnership. Jan had grown up in the same whirl of events as his new bride, and now grew entranced with the world of international thought.
Opponents gave credit for the French victories to Napoleon’s military genius, but the French themselves (including Napoleon) disagreed. They insisted that their true advantage came from the bottom up, not the top down; a hitherto unknown esprit de corps based on their common loyalty to la belle France et la révolution. This, they said, made even amateur French militiamen into better soldiers than any professional troops in service to old fashioned kings.
Intellectuals like Attorney Rettig called it “Nationalism,” and defined it as “loyalty to a nation and its ideals instead of a person.” One pictures the 25 year old Jan sitting in a cafe and pondering all these great events with like minded friends. “If there is a French people and nation, what is mine? It isn’t this defeated emperor of moribund Austria. Aha! My people date back to the great Slavic migrations of the Dark Ages. And who led those? King Lech, who began the people of Poland; his brother Rus, who created an empire from Estonia in the west, to Moscow in the east, and on down to the Ukraine; and finally King Czech, who created Bohemia and Moravia. That must be where I truly belong.”
(NOTE FROM KATE: This is really pushing my Czech buttons. Arrgh!)
Jan Rettig spent the rest of his life working for a renaissance of the old Czech culture, with the wholehearted support and assistance of his loving wife. They became the regional version of what we would call a Power Couple. It began at home, of course. Jan had grown up in a bilingual household. The couple now decided to speak only Czech within their walls. Magdalena learned this new-to-her language quickly, and from then on used her middle name Dobromila (literally “lover of good”) rather than the first name she’d gone by as a girl.
Her “M” period ended, and the “D” period began.
THE WORLD OF M. DOBROMILA RETTIGOVA TO AND AFTER THE FALL OF NAPOLEON
Napoleon’s reign finally came to a conclusive end half a decade later, with the 1815 Battle of Waterloo; an event that took place in the same year that M.D. Rettigova turned 30.
Stop and think about that. Her entire world, from the age of 7-30, had been formed during and by the political and social upheavals wrought by the French Revolution. The years of her childhood playing with dolls; the years of her adolescence; her marriage with a man she loved; and on into motherhood. (She eventually gave birth to 11 children, 3 of whom survived to adulthood).
The wars may have ended in 1815, but the Rettig family had been changed from its roots on up. The fall of France did precious little to weaken their devotion to the idea of a Czech People whose ancient roots predated any allegiance to the rulers of Austria.
Speaking of which… Austria came out of all this history as master of an enormous, polyglot empire more or less comparable to its possessions before the eruptions in France. Austria also wielded dominating international power due to the personal influence of its legendary chancellor, Klemens von Metternich. A man who soon proved to be one of the most brilliantly conservative, backward-looking minds the world has ever known.
(NOTE FROM KATE: While doing research for a book set in the Balkans, I learned that toward the end of WWI the former Yugoslavia was home to at least 33 languages, many of which are now considered dead.)
Metternich created, or at least to codified, the idea of a balance of power across the continent. Under his influence, the larger states agreed to join what he called the “Concert Of Europe”; an alliance aimed at maintaining the status quo. The events of France’s Revolutionary Era had lasted for a bit more than 20 years. Metternich’s repressive counter reaction would go on for more than 30.
[OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FUTURE: the “System of Metternich” inside of Austria persisted until a series of attempted revolutions in 1848. The Hungarians basically won in the east, causing the country to be renamed “Austria-Hungary” with the Emperor being titled as the king of two lands rather than a singular one. The Czech effort at independence failed, and they remained the Kingdom of Bohemia with the Emperor of Austria-Hungary being the automatic King; just as things had been since the Battle of Prague in 1621. Only WWI finally shattered the empire completely.
M.D. Rettigova died in 1845, so these pivotal events all took place after she was gone.]
With Napoleon exiled and Europe acting in concert, Metternich turned his attention to the nagging problem of stability inside the Empire. History shows that for all his flexibility when it came to tactics, there was an overarching principle: he wanted to erase the French Revolution, and turn the clock back to the world as it existed in 1791. Politically and socially. And Chancellor Metternich was willing to do anything – anything at all – to accomplish that goal. His army of secret police was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
You can see how much danger this created for a politically active, reform seeking couple like Mr. and Mrs. Rettig. But they were not the types to knuckle under. Mr. Rettig soldiered on, plotting with extreme caution behind the scenes. They could not oppose the political realities. Not with any hope of survival, let alone success. Thus most of his efforts would have turned toward building a groundwork for future changes. He and his fellow radicals began to promote things like academic study into the Czech language and history, promotion of Czech arts, research into Czech folklore, and education of the upcoming generations. Etc. Much the same sort of things, in fact, as the Grimm Brothers were doing in Germany, and others would soon be doing across the continent.
(NOTE FROM KATE: The Bible had been translated into Czech during the Hussite wars, and one of the concessions of the 1621 Hapsburg takeover had been the continuation of sermons in Czech as well as Latin. This made it much easier to resurrect the language that it would’ve been under other circumstances.)
Mrs. Rettigova? She established a school to teach young women “how to keep their husbands happy.” What could satisfy Herr Metternich more than a traditional focus like that? Not much, which is no doubt why the school survived even though the classes were taught in Czech (with German as a fallback), with materials written in Czech, recipes that dutifully used local Czech ingredients, and so on.
It was “soft power” at its finest, and it worked far better than any of the abortive political battles fought by her (no doubt very happy) husband and his friends.
Portrait by Jan Vilimek, 1860-1938. Such a nice, plump, harmless woman. Right? Riiiiight.
Notice those years? The artist painted this a full 40 years after M.D. Rettigova died. Her work carried that much cultural weight.
In 1826, at the age of 41, M.D. Rettigova published her Czech-language treatise “A Household Cookery Book,” which she revised and expanded over decades of later editions. That book served as an essential text for every Czech household in the century that followed, even though her specific advice grew ever more dated. There wasn’t even a remote competitor on the culinary side until the 1920’s, after the nation of Czechoslovakia had come into being, and the impossible dream achieved.
HERITAGE
Modern Czechs view Rettigova (largely known by that single name) as a sort of cartoon exemplar of a bygone and not-so-nostalgic age. “You can’t even use that book anymore! Every recipe starts with a pound of butter and half a dozen eggs. Who eats like that? And come on! ‘How to keep your man happy’? Really? Who wants to push that view of womanhood in the modern world? Haven’t we evolved a bit in the 193 years since she published? M.D. Rettigova was a lovely lady for her time, and my own great-Grandma mother swore by everything she wrote, but we need to look toward the future.”
I won’t disagree with any of that. Times really have changed, and I believe for the better. But I strongly disagree with waving a dismissive hand, and walking away after finishing that statement. It’s unfair, shortsighted, disrespectful, and just plain dumb.
Consider this: Your own beloved Grandma does not control your life. Nor should she. And you certainly wouldn’t agree with all her values and viewpoints, nor she with yours. But did she matter? Does she matter? You’re darned right she does! She and her equally old fashioned peers created the paper and ink you are using to write your own life. There’s no getting around it.
Think on it from this angle too. Are you old enough yet to be into your own parenting and grandparenting years? If so, I’d bet money that you occasionally stop and wonder if you are living up to Grandma’s example. It’s just the way we are.
CONCLUSION
Magdalena Dobromila Rettigova, born a solid quarter-century before Abraham Lincoln, has served as the national Grandma of the modern Czech nation for coming up on 200 years. It’s soft power, not hard. The stuff of homes and community centers more than parliament buildings and cathedrals. But it’s power nonetheless. Power right down at the core of Czech society. Power that has made, and continues to make a difference in hundreds of millions of lives.
She mattered, and mattered a lot. And this is one of her very best recipes. It doesn’t get more “heritage” than that.
Even if it does start out with the better part of a pound of butter and three large egg yolks.
Speculaas filled with almond paste? Thank you Mom, can I have another?
Our published book, Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World, has a wonderful recipe for Nut Dough Speculaas, which offers up a soft, tender version of the famous Dutch spice cookie. This recent article is all about the ultra-authentic, thin-and-crispy version, featuring a recipe straight out of Belgium. Our research for that article accidentally revealed a third style that is immensely popular next door in Holland (a/k/a the Netherlands): Speculaas dough filled with almond paste.
The Nut Dough recipe makes an extra tender version. The 100% Authentic recipe comes out thin and crisp. This is the one in the middle; toothsome, gently spiced, and made with U.S. pantry ingredients. Take that and fill it with homemade almond paste? [Finger Kiss]
As always, you can skip to the bottom if you want the recipe alone. The discussion of our stumbles and revelations along the way is going to take some time.
A SIMPLE, PANTRY-FRIENDLY SPECULAAS DOUGH
Easy peasy, I promise. Yes, this is a top shelf American version of a very European cookie, but that doesn’t make it complicated. The approach couldn’t be more standard. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in an egg, and then mix in the flour, leavening, and spices. Cover and refrigerate overnight so the flour can hydrate and the spices even out. Form and bake however you wish.
The only potential complication lies in the hydration part. You are after a drier dough with only enough moisture to hold together when squeezed. (the Almond Paste filling will add any richness you think is missing). That means the base recipe is likely to be too dry outside of a humid environment. You solve that by adding extra water a tablespoon or two at a time until it holds when squeezed. One or two is usually enough, though it could take as many as six to eight.
Just go sparingly! It is much easier to add more water in than to take any out. I did one batch with the full eight tablespoons (½ cup), and had to double the batch in order to avoid throwing the whole thing out. Tripling would have worked even better. Fortunately, the recipe has enough flexibility to have saved me from that extreme.
THE ALMOND PASTE FILLING
No need to waste a lot of time on this piece either. Almond Paste is super easy to make, and we have a whole discussion of it in the article on Marzipan. The only difference for this purpose is the subtle addition of some citrus zest to help it meet and marry with the flavors of the dough.
We include instructions for the almond paste in the cookie recipe down below. I’ve added our recipe for Marzipan and Almond Paste too, as a free bonus. [NOTE FROM KATE: I love anything resembling marzipan, and the orange notes in this paste have a delicious more-ishness to it. So much so that Scott had to keep chasing me away as I tried to execute numerous rounds of diligent quality control.]
THE MANY DIFFERENT SHAPES
And now we get to the long part. But not because the shaping is hard! It isn’t. The dough is friendly, too, and the techniques are all straightforward. The length comes from the sheer number of options. This article lists a full dozen (12!) possibilities, and you don’t have to stop there. Jam and fruit fillings spread in the oven, searching for any crevice where they can leak out to create black and bitter disaster on your cookie sheet. Almond Paste does not. That feature opens up your options to basically any cookie shape you can imagine.
Bar Cookies? We Don’t Need No Stinking Bar Cookies!
Honesty compels me to admit that most people make Gevulde Speculaas as a bar cookie. You simply coat the bottom of the baking dish with one layer of cookie dough, spread a thick layer of almond paste on top (it should be noticeably thicker than the dough), and then cover that with a second layer of dough. Bake at 350° F (175° C) for about 18-25 minutes, or until the cookie part on top has set by the edges but is still a little soft in the center.
We, however, have a rule: no bar cookies! (Read the article on Chocolate Fudge Cookies if you insist on knowing why). That changes the focus to all those infinitely more interesting options, such as…
Sandwich Cookies!
Roll out the dough to 3/8″ thick. Cut out your choice of shape (we used larger rounds) and mark half of them with whatever you want for the top (we did a cutout for one, and a cookie stamp for a second.
Array the bottoms on a lined baking sheet (or two), keeping 1″ between each piece to account for spreading. Coat the bottom of the cookie with almond paste,* and then place the tops on top. Bake at 350° F (175° C) for about 12-15 minutes, or until the edges have set and the cookie has puffed up.
* Our favorite way to spread the almond paste goes like this:
Roll up a ball of almond paste of the size you estimate you’ll need. Place this in the center of the bottom cookie, and then place a piece of parchment paper on top. You can dust it with some powdered sugar if there is an excessive amount of sticking.
Press down with a rolling pin to evenly flatten the ball without spreading it all the way to the edges.
Now stop, peel off the paper, and check where you are. (A) Was your estimate about right? Hooray! Replace the paper and use your pin to spread the paste out to the edges. (B) Were you a little short? Add a little more almond paste and repeat the process. Your new almond paste will meld right into the original piece. Or (C) did you add a little too much almond paste? If so, use dampened fingers or a dampened spoon to remove the excess and then proceed, giving thanks that you did not press down all the way when you started.
Trim the edges with a dampened cookie cutter as needed. NOTE: You need it to be damp because the almond paste will stick like crazy if it isn’t.[NOTE FROM KATE: I was way too impatient, so I made a ball of almond paste and squished it with the bottom of a wet glass. It’s messier, I admit I had to sop up extra water off a cookie or two. It was fast though, even enough, and got the job done.]
Spiral a/k/a Pinwheel Cookies!
Roll out the Speculaas dough into a 13” x 7” (33 cm x 18 cm) rectangle ≈ ¼” thick.
Use the “balls of almond paste” trick described above in the sandwich cookie section to create an almond layer that is also ¼” thick on top of the dough layer. Making it as even as possible will yield the best patterns in the end.
Roll the whole thing up “jelly roll” style, and then move to a refrigerator to firm up for at least 15 minutes.
Use a thin thread, lightweight fishing line, or dental floss to cut off ⅜” cookies, and then array prettiest-side-up on your parchment lined sheet, leaving 1” between each to account for spreading. You should end up with 35-40 cookies. NOTE: This is a great trick if you do not know it! Shimmy the thread under the roll ⅜” from an edge. Bring up the sides so the thread crosses over at a spot ⅜” from the same edge, but on top of the roll. Pull on both threads so the loop shrinks down to cut off your piece. The thread has less surface area than even the thinnest knife, and will therefore leave a cleaner pattern. You can roll a sticky thread in flour or powdered sugar if you want to gild the lily, but we didn’t need to.
Bake at 350° F (175° C) for ≈10 minutes, or until the edges are firm and the cookies have puffed. Let them set on the tray for ≈1 minute, and then move to a rack to cool completely. NOTE: The baked tops should show a distinct pattern, but the bottoms against the tray will turn into an almost uniform brown.
The ends are never as pretty, especially when you need to press down to flatten the odd shaped pieces out. This shows three end pieces surrounding one middle piece.
Bullseye Cookies! [NO PHOTOS]
Roll out the Speculaas dough into a 13” x 7” (33 cm x 18 cm) rectangle ≈ ¼” thick on a sheet of parchment paper.
Place a long, 1” diameter sausage of almond paste down the middle of each strip. Roll up lengthwise to encase that sausage in the dough.
Use a thin thread, lightweight fishing line, or dental floss to cut off ⅜” cookies, and then array them prettiest-side-up on your parchment lined sheet, leaving 1” between each to account for spreading. You should end up with 35-40 cookies.
Bake at 350° F (175° C) for ≈10 minutes, or until the edges are firm and the cookies have puffed. Let them set on the tray for ≈1 minute, and then move to a rack to cool completely.
Tubes and Lengthwise Lines!
Roll out a thinner spiral and cut it into 2” lengths. Starting with a 13” x 6” (33 cm x 15 cm) rectangle should do it.
For tubes, bake at 350° F (175° C) for ≈11-12 minutes, or until the outside is firm and the cookies have puffed. NOTE: The tubes will settle into being flat on the bottom. We haven’t figured a way around that.
For Horizontal lines, use a thin paring knife or a long thread to cut through the top from end to end. Array these curved side down on the baking sheet. What would have been spirals when viewed from the edge in will appear as lines when the roll is cut lengthwise. NOTE: you can also use the paring knife to cut almost all the way through, leaving only a thin piece at the bottom to connect the two halves. Unfold this like an opening flower and you’ll have a double-width line cookie. Bake these at 350° F (175° C) for ≈9-11 minutes depending on thickness.
Let the baked pieces set on the tray for a few minutes, and then move to a rack to cool completely.
Line cookies on the left, spirals on the right. It’s basically the same pattern, but in one case you cut across to reveal the spiral, and in the other you cut lengthwise to reveal straight lines.
NOTE: You can use the “Bullseye” method here as well, or make the final shape a little thinner and broader by creating a filled rectangle instead of a filled tube.
NOTE #2: For Tube Cookies it’s it’s often worth decorating the top of the tube/cake with slices almonds. See the photos of the “Bake And Slice” method down below.
Molded and Filled Speculaas (Works With Jam Too)!
Apricot jam for the filling worked great, but we lost the pattern on top because I forgot to chill before baking.
Filled and plain Speculaas using the 100% authentic, Belgian Brown Sugar dough instead of this U.S. Brown Sugar dough. That time I did chill before baking.
Our favorite mold for individual Filled Speculaas (and gingerbreads of all kinds). We bought it at an actual castle on a trip to visit family in the Czech Republic! It was actually called a “butter mold” rather than a cookie mold, not that it makes any difference.
This Ma’amoul mold would have also worked, but can you imagine the amount of almond paste in each cookie?
Fill a bowl with with rice/corn/tapioca flour. Spoon this in to fill your mold, turn it over to pour the excess back into your bowl, and then rap the back firmly to knock off any excess. Voila! A perfectly dusted mold. (See the articles on the Speculaas Master Class and Filled Gingerbread cookies for more variations and details). FYI, we used this mold to make individual portions:
Roll the dough out to ¼” thick (thicker for a larger mold, of course), and then cut out a piece of dough just large enough to fit inside the entire mold while leaving a thin rim of dough up and over the side of the mold. Use well-dusted to press it gently into the pattern. NOTE: Too much dough is better than too little since you can always trim. NOTE #2: Holes aren’t a disaster. Patch them by pressing in extra dough with your floured fingertips. It will subtract from the inside space by a smidgen, but no one should see it when the cookies are baked.
Add a filling of your choice to a level that reaches level with the top of the mold. REMEMBER: That does NOT mean the top of your dough rim around the edge! Do that and you’ll have too much filling, which will lead to leaking, bursting, and other bad results.
Roll and cut out a second piece of dough sufficient to cover the filled in mold. Place this on top and then run a rolling pin over the entire thing to join the seams. Tap the filled cookie out with the mold-side up, and then use a paring knife to clean up the edges.
Array on a lined baking sheet, and then chill in the refrigerator for at least 15-30 minutes. This will help to keep the pattern a little sharper.
Bake at 350° F (175° C) until the edges are firm. It took ≈11-12 minutes for our smaller mold, but will obviously vary according to the size and thickness of the one you choose to use.
NOTE: It’s a good idea to precook any jam filling before you use it (simply bring it to a boil in the microwave or a small pan). Raw jam tries very, very hard to find a crack it can seep out of. The precooked jam is much, much less runny and will only seep out if you’ve made a noticeable mistake in sealing things up.
Cookie “Dumplings” and “Ravioli”!
Note the extra thick amount of almond inside
Our handy dandy dumpling press, last used when we were working up the recipe for Croatian Rafioli
NOTE: This method uses a bit more almond paste per piece. It should also work with a pre-cooked fruit filling, but we haven’t tried it.
Roll out the Speculaas dough to ⅜” thick, cut out a circle the right size to fit your handy dandy dumpling press, and then fill it with a football-shaped piece of almond paste. Squeeze gently to seal the edges.
Array on a parchment lined baking sheet as you pop the piece out of the press. Leave 1” between each one to account for spreading.
Bake at 350° F (175° C) until the edges are firm. It took ≈ 10 minutes for ours, but we anted to make sure they were baked all the way through.
Leave the cookies on the tray for 10 minutes and then move to a rack to cool completely.
Thumbprints! [No Photo]
Duh. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this in time to get some done for the photo shoot. Bad baker. Bad, bad, bad. No biscuit for you.
Roll the dough into balls ≈ 1¼” in diameter.
Use the handle of a wooden spoon to poke a deep hole, and then fill that hole with almond paste.
Array on a parchment lined baking sheet, and give each ball a gentle squish to make sure it will stay in position with the almond paste facing up. Keep 1-2” in between each piece to account for spreading.
Bake at 350° F (175° C) for ≈ 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are firm.
Bake-And-Slice Rolls and Rectangles!
This began it’s life as a Spiral Cookie roll. It was baked before slicing, which allowed it to slump into a rectangle.
The flattened spiral from a baked-before-slicing roll.
Make a roll as described above for Spiral or Bullseye cookies, but a little thicker. You achieve this by starting with a 13” x 8” (33 cm x 21 cm) rectangle.
Bake at 350° F (175° C) for ≈20 minutes, or until the outside is firm, the tube has slumped down into a rectangular “cake”, and cookies have puffed.
Let this set on the tray for ≈5 minute, and then move to a rack to cool completely. Slice with a thin, sharp, serrated knife after it’s completely cool. You will end up with elongated, almost-rectangular spirals.
A “Bullseye Cookie” bar decorated with almond slices. We tried to have this one start as a filled rectangle instead of a roll, but that only enhanced the slumping. Still tasty, and kind of nice if you want the sharper edges in the end.
Don’t Bother To Fill At All
Straight, unfilled Speculaas made from this dough. Not bad, are they?
The dough works fine as a plain old Speculaas cookie pressed into a mold. It doesn’t hold patterns quite as well as the 100% Authentic Speculaas, but it’s pretty darned close. Bake according to the instructions in that article using 350° F (175° C) instead of 375° F (190° C). The molasses in the U.S. brown sugar apparently makes them cook just that little bit faster.
NOTE: You may (may, not will) want to knead in a small amount of extra flour or starch if the dough is particularly soft and sticky. That’s a useful characteristic for the many methods described above, but can result in either sticking or unreliable patterns for straight-out molded cookies. Be judicious, as it won’t take much.
CONCLUSION
The dough is standard and easy. The almond paste is standard and easy. The shaping is fun and interesting once you pick a method (and get used to liking off almond paste from your fingers). And the flavor is just about perfect if you want the world’s friendliest, most accessible, spice cookie treat.
What’s not to love?
We urge you to give it a try. If you do, there’s basically no way it’s ever going to leave your repertoire. They are, as our English friends say, intensely “more-ish.”
Enjoy!
IMPORTANT: You want to make Almond Paste for Gevulde (Filled) Speculaas, not marzipan
Ma’amoul is the cookie of the Middle East; the one that crosses every cultural division. Muslim, Christian, or Jew, it doesn’t matter. One cannot celebrate Eid, Easter, Purim, or any other big ceremony without this treat any more than you could stage a U.S. wedding without a cake.
What you have here is a very good Ma’amoul that replaces some Mediterranean baking staples (mastic, mahlab, and sandalwood powder) with readily available American substitutes (vanilla, almond, anise, and ginger). The result is an amazing cookie that everyone adores – at least if you’ll accept the testimony of close to 100 taste testers, including several dozen from the local mosque who grew up with the genuine article. The recipe below is one of our proudest successes.
How good is it? Let’s put it this way. Every person in the family – on their own – fell back on poetry when asked for a description. Scott offered antique Arabian Nights phrases like, “the fragrant breeze that wafts from the garden of the Sultan.” Kate produced, “elegant, perfumed Fig Newtons dressed up in flowered bonnets.” Our daughters insisted on “parasols, sun dresses, and corsets bound by ribbons of scented silk.” No one reacted with anything less.
This has to be the most evocative set of flavors we’ve ever come up with. They are fantastic. Awesome. Amazing. Magnificent. I cannot urge them on you any more. Not for Christmas. This is a spring and summer treat, not a winter one. But it’s definitely a cookie you need to experience at least once in your life.
At the same time, do not be tempted to “test” the product by picking up one of those dreadful commercial versions from your local Middle Eastern market. We did, and our sheer dismay almost killed the project before it got started. Calling them “awful” would be too kind. Our daughter, a camp counselor, refused to inflict them on her kids! No, you need to do this one right if you want to see what all the fuss is about. I promise: they’re worth the effort.
As always, skip to the bottom if you want the recipe without the discussion
First Step: What Is The Target?
Do some research and you’ll see that every region, country, city, town, and home claims its own unique twist on Ma’amoul. The sheer number of variations makes it hard to pin down a central theme. I had to read through almost 30 recipes (!) before I could nail things down clearly enough to even work on a recipe. Even then I ended up with a pretty vague description. The target was:
A filled, molded cookie;
A buttery, slightly crunchy crust with some elusive, sweet-spice accents;
A filling made from nuts and dried fruits; and
A healthy dose of rose water to import the Mystery Of The East.
None of those targets was particularly hard to achieve once we figured out what all the exotic ingredients were for, but it took some research to get there.
Bringing The Ingredient List Under Control
The recipes I’d been reviewing called for a number of ingredients that many American bakers could view as exotic. The bulk of the crust is made from:
Semolina flour;
Clarified butter;
Rose water (mandatory);
Orange blossom water (less so); and
In some cases yeast instead of baking powder.
None of those ingredients posed any special challenge. The yeast could simply be ignored as an option for ultra-purists, since modern Middle Eastern recipes tend to use baking powder anyway. The two flower waters are readily available in modern supermarkets, and certainly in ethnic markets or baking specialty stores. As for semolina and clarified butter, they are even more available than rose- or orange blossom water, and we’d developed some experience on how to use them during our work on the recipe for Ghraybee (the great Middle Eastern shortbread). But then came the little touches to enhance the crust. These were:
A spice called mastic a/k/a mistika (whosis?);
A spice called mahlab (whatsis?); and
Sandalwood powder (in a baked good?!).
None of the recipes used those spices in any significant amount. They were clearly accent flavors, not core ones. But that kind of thing can matter when you want to get the flavor “right” in addition to “good.” That sent me to Internet library… which greatly eased my mind. It turns out that all three are used in ways that American bakers will find both comforting and familiar, and can be replaced by substitutes you already own.
Mastic is a quintessentially Greek spice made from the dried sap of a local tree, commonly used in baking in the same way that Americans use vanilla… Whoa! Hold it right there. Stripped to its core, Ma’amoul is simply a flavored crust wrapped around a fruit-and-nut filling. What could fit a cookie like that better than a touch of vanilla? And vanilla is missing from the ingredient list! Duh. Substitution #1: check. [For what it’s worth, the exchange rate is two parts of vanilla extract for every one part of ground mastic. Reverse engineer as you desire if you keep ground mastic on hand.]
That was easy. What about Mahlab? This, it turns out, is a spice made from the seeds of a shrub related to cherries. It’s typically used as an accent for fruits, and has a flavor that people compare to almond extract mashed up with sweet-spice notes such as cinnamon, anise, and/or cardamom. This makes just as much sense as the first one! You’d have to search long and hard to find a fruit-and-nut filling that doesn’t have some almond extract with a sweet-spice accent. [We ended up at ¼ tsp. of almond extract plus a healthy pinch of star anise to replace ¼ tsp. of mahlab. Reverse engineer as your pantry allows].
On to the… Sandalwood Powder?! Okay, let’s put this on the table. I have a horrible reaction to the smell of sandalwood. One whiff of incense or scented candles can give me a migraine, and one woman in sandalwood perfume is enough to make me flee the elevator in panic. I’m getting a headache now at the mere thought of this noxious toxin showing up in my food.
At the same time, I can see what it’s supposed to do. The same thing that powdered ginger does in other dried fruit recipes. Substitution #3: check that one off as well. [That said, we tried some ginger and ended up leaving it out. You’ll see it in in the recipe as an option for those who like to gild their lilies.]
Getting The Filling Right
All that research proved that the flavor profile in the crust is a lot more standard than you’d think from reading the list of ingredients. The same is even more true of the filling. It’s basically the standard fruit-and-nut filling from Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World, plus a healthy amount of flower water. The only challenge would lie in perfecting the exact proportions for this particular case.
First the nuts. What could be more Middle Eastern than pistachios? The answer is… walnuts, at least in this case. The bulk of this filling requires a softer nut, and the slight bitterness of walnuts fit in perfectly. Pistachios did taste better, but the texture didn’t work. Maybe a mix of the two…? Oh yeah. That’s the way to go. Better than either one standing on its own.
Next, I have to admit that dates aren’t exactly my favorite fruit. They’re just so… meh. But that was not to be. Dates are 100% required if you want to make a proper Ma’amoul. They are the blank canvas for everything else, and no amount of fidgeting can change that basic fact. That said, we once again preferred the multidimensional, sophisticated effect of a mixed fruit filling over something made with dates alone. Figs turned out to be our favorite addition; apricots and raisins our least favorites; and cherries acceptable, but only when used with so much restraint that I left finally left them off the recipe completely. Consider that a secret tip for online readers only!
That left only the elephant in the room: rose water. This is, to put it mildly, a controversial ingredient. Those who like it tend to use it with abandon. Those who are not fans (like me) tend to respond with phrases like “Grandma’s eau de toilette.” If you’re in the first category, please note that many of the recipes I researched use up to three times what you see in ours. Have at it if you will. We, emphatically, will not.
Indeed, my aversion to rose water is strong enough that I tried a version using only orange blossom water, which is much less pushy, and even penciled in a plan to work on a custom version with “more acceptable” aromatics. The test results scotched both of those ideas, but also reassured this rose-water critic that it wasn’t going to be as rough as I feared.
Yes, this is a recipe that requires a certain amount of rose water to do the heavy lifting. You can’t do without it. And yes, up to 50% of that can be replaced with orange blossom water, with fantastic results that all of us preferred. But we also found that these ingredients, and the baking process, tamed the perfume overflow that Kate and I had feared so much. Indeed, consider that as Free Tip #2: You will be surprised how many of the aromatic compounds cook out during the baking, even though the filling is wrapped in a crust.
A version made with 50/50 blends on both the nuts and fruits, plus 2 tbsp. each of rose- and orange blossom water turned out great. More than enough to trigger requests for the next batch. But there was some room for refining.
First I replaced the bulk of the sugar with honey. A fantastic idea you should embrace. Then I adjusted the salt level, and… O.M.G. Words cannot express the magic embodied by how these ingredients come together, marry, and create a whole that is vastly more than the sum of its parts. Ma’amoul really are an experience straight out of the Arabian Nights.
Forgetting A Part, Aren’t We Scott? What About Putting The Cookie Together?
Oh. Yeah.
I’m not going to kid you: forming the Ma’amoul is the most time consuming part of the recipe. In fact, it’s by far the most time consuming part of the recipe, because the dough and the filling are as simple as a cookie gets once you have the ingredients ironed out.
For The Dough: Whirl the dry dough ingredients in your food processor to distribute, and then process in the wet. Remove, wrap, and refrigerate until you’re ready to form.
For The Filling: Put everything but the nuts into your food processor, whirl until smooth, and then process in the nuts until they are ground to your satisfaction. Remove, wrap, and refrigerate until you’re ready to form.
It honestly couldn’t be any quicker or easier.
Forming the cookies isn’t all that hard either, but it does take some fidgety technique you can only develop with practice. The recipe contains good, step-by-step instructions. Both Kate and I took careful notes. But nothing is going to replace a bit of practice. Grow up in the Ma’amoul Zone and you’d probably master the process after 500 cookies under the careful eyes of your mother. We’re aiming to get that number down to 200. But that’s still a solid couple of batches. Just enjoy the fact that making your Ma’amoul definitely gets easier and faster as you go along, and is a fine thing to do with company.
I also want to emphasize that Ma’amoul are easier to form than other filled products such as Trogirski Rafioli, filled Gingerbread, and savory foods like tortellini, pierogies, etc. That’s because those have actual doughs that you need to roll out. The Ma’amoul “dough” is more like a very thick paste once it warms up from a stay in the fridge. You can wrap it around a ball of filling with nothing more than a bit of dedicated work to pinch the thick areas over to where the crust is thin.
Next, you can leave them plain, and they will taste just as good but why shy away from that final touch which makes them extra, extra special? Home bakers typically shape their Ma’amoul with a neat little mold that comes with a handle. This is a much easier tool to master than Europe’s elaborate Gingerbread, Speculaa, and Springerle molds. The cookies come free with nothing more than a few whacks on the counter if you’ve got it properly floured. Kate bought me the inexpensive plastic mold below just for our Ma’amoul testing, but I promise that we will both be using it for a great many European cookies in the years to come.
Note To Friends And Family: Don’t be surprised if your next set of filled gingerbreads comes with a geometric pattern instead of a figurine. This mold is especially easy to use.
Final Observations, Wisdom, and Lessons Learned
Anyone who loves the idea of Heritage Cookies should make this cookie. How many recipes are there that trace their roots back to the time of the pharaohs? How many can claim to be as central in their culture as wedding cake to a U.S. ceremony? How many will inspire an ode, or transport your imagination to a fantasy world you haven’t summoned up since childhood? I can only think of one, and this is it.
Ma’amoul are a fabulous treat that I guarantee you’re going to enjoy. G.U.A.R.A.N.T.E.E. But they are ever so much more than that, too. This cookie is a cultural ambassador. No matter your point of view – taste, texture, romance, culture, or history – it is a recipe that has it all. “Special” barely scratches the surface.
A NOTE FROM KATE: My grandmother used the word “maamul” in Czech to denote a person who begs shamelessly, and the verb “maamulit” to describe the act of begging until I got my way. It is a colloquial slang. I have heard others use it too. But there is no Czech etymology that would tie the word to begging as such. My best guess is that the frequent trade between Czechoslovakia and the countries of the Middle East introduced a new cookie that people loved to eat, but didn’t know how to make. Translation? If you want a cookie that will reduce your family to begging for more, you have found it!
POSTSCRIPT
Many thanks go out to the kind folk at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, who put up with a long pair of visits, including one on their sabbath, and provided invaluable feedback on what a good Ma’amoul is supposed to be.
Speaking of which… This may be the best takeaway I can provide about what we mean by a “proper heritage cookie.” The Islamic Center of Pittsburgh has an intriguing mix of parishioners from many different backgrounds. There’s the Middle Eastern contingent, the Indian Subcontinent group, the African group, and various homegrown American Muslims, all wedded into a unique and welcoming mélange. I, of course, was looking for the Middle Eastern natives. I knew the cookies were good – any moron could tell they were good! – but I needed feedback on whether they were capital-R “Right.” That had to come from people who grew up eating them.
I got my help, sure enough. But there’s a story that goes along with that help.
If I watched it once, I watched it twenty times. A gentleman from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Morocc0, Libya, etc. agrees to lend me a hand. He tastes a sample, nods sagely, and says something along these lines: “These are good. Very good! Not as good as my mother’s, of course, but they aren’t too sweet, and yes: they are definitely a true Ma’amoul. Nice job.”
Then someone he knows from one of the other groups looks over his shoulder and innocently says, “What are those?”
“You don’t know Ma’moul? How is that possible? You have to try one!”
Three more samples disappear from the tin. There follows the sound of munching, an ecstatic exclamation, and then a buzz of excited conversation and delighted laughter as the group passes out of range.
