Mexican cookies – Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World

SPICED CHOCOLATE DROP COOKIES – A Master Recipe For Infinite Delights

Turn your favorite chocolate-and-spice bars into exquisite cookies

“Infinite Temptation” may make more sense in the title than “Infinite Delights.” The testing began with a Chocolate Black Pepper cookie, and the batch looked good as it came out of the oven. Thirteen nice, hefty, 2½” pieces. I tasted one, and liked it. A lot! So I duly brought them out to my beloved, and left them there on a plate so she could try one too. Then I went off do some work on another project.

I strolled back in about 30 minutes later. There were 4 cookies left on the plate. Our pup had been with me in the office. Kate had been left alone with the plate, parked on the sofa with her laptop.

13-1 = 12. 12-4 = the sort of math that wise old husbands forgot how to do a great many years ago. Make that wise and generous husbands, since I immediately ate three more and was kind enough to leave her the last.

Batch #2 got made when we hosted a dinner for our daughter and niece. Miranda had the will power to resist, thanks to a bit too much spice for her taste. Amanda? Amanda ate so many that I don’t have the heart to rat her out in public. Let’s just say that we now have testimony to how well the cookies go with a glass of wine, and with a glass of water, straight out of hand when no one seems to be looking, and with coffee too.

Get it? Got it? Good. These really are all of that; as simple as can be, absurdly rich, and with just enough of a twist to always be unique.

NOTE FROM KATE: One whole pound of chocolate, divided into only four dozen cookies. That’s a lot of antioxidants per cookie! So these aren’t just delicious, they are a regular health food! [Yay! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!]

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

The Cookie Part

This is a fairly standard drop cookie, so there’s no need to bore you with the chemistry. Go look at a regular Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Subtract ¼ cup (1¾ oz = 50 g) of flour, and replace it with half a pound (8 oz = 225 g) of melted chocolate. Bing, bang, boom, you’ve got it. The chocolate adds back the structure you lost by removing that bit of flour.

Add another half pound of chopped chocolate (or really good chips), the spice du jour, and you’re done. The only tricky part comes with the baking time. It’s easy to overbake a cookie this dark, and doing means sharing chocolate essence with the air, so we limited the baking time just to be on the safe side. 10-11 minutes instead of the more normal 10-12.

Just make sure to use a good chocolate. There is a full pound of chocolate in every batch. The flavor comes through, and cheap chocolate will show.

NOTE FROM KATE – ABOUT CHOCOLATE: Some of you might’ve seen articles about chocolate with elevated heavy metal levels. Long story short: which risk factor do you want to go with on a given occasion: chocolate or chardonnay?

Development

Chocolate is great. Chocolate is awesome. But the special part here comes from the spice.

Please note that I didn’t actually create this cookie. We publish heritage cookies not mind numbingly good original creations. That said, the accusation has been made and so I feel the need to defend my process.

I began the project looking to highlight a black pepper cookie. Think about it: all those spice snaps, with flavors ranging from across the map, and yet almost no one remembers to try the one spice that’s in basically every kitchen across the breadth of Western civilization. It couldn’t be right… and it wasn’t. Examples abound. And I may get back to them idea later on. But the thought of chocolate black pepper cookies could not be resisted, and thus I went a little sideways.

A Google search for the term “chocolate spice cookies” comes back with a bit more than 68 million results! Italian recipes lead the way, but U.S. versions (like this one) aren’t far behind. There’s one from South Africa with just black pepper… there are a few based on Mexican chocolate… Viennese chocolate pepper cookies (a roll out)… It doesn’t end. This isn’t an original idea, just my version of one that every baker across the world has thought about from time to time.

So what did I do? (A) I elected to go with a U.S.-style drop cookie, and (B) I made it so good that all the other 67,999,999 are stuck with trying to come in second.

NOTE FROM KATE – ON FLOUR: We had a batch where we ran out of AP flour (11.7% gluten) and ended up using pizza flour (14% gluten) for about a quarter of the required amount. Those cookies didn’t spread. They had so much more structural integrity that if you made a little pyramid, it would probably look like a little mountain upon baking. The cookies in the photos are made with regular AP flour, and they did spread some but not very much. This begs the question, would a softer flour yield a more traditional cookie with more spread? Would substituting some starch for 10% of the flour do the trick? If you try it, let us know on our eponymous FaceBook group.

FYI, there was nothing wrong with the pyramidal cookies went came to taste. Their centers remained soft and may even have held on to moisture better. High levels of either cocoa or chocolate will suck moisture out of any baked good, and this is a great example of the phenomenon.

The Spice Part

The first test batch stuck with black pepper. Four teaspoons of it! The result was superb, but it did push right up against that line between “right” and “too much.” The recipe accordingly says 3-4 now. But the big Aha! moment came when we realized that black pepper was just the tip of this particular iceberg.

Go out to your favorite chocolate shop and you’ll find a whole shelf of well spiced options. Chocolate flavored with cinnamon. Chocolate flavored with cinnamon and chili (the Mexican chocolate profile). Chocolate flavored with cayenne, garam masala, ginger, nutmeg, star anise, cloves, gingerbread mix… It’s endless! I mentioned this to Kate and her eyes lit up with an evil gleam.

Every single one of those would work in this recipe. Just compare the potency of your chosen spice to the designated 3-4 tsp. of black pepper in this master recipe, and keep notes so that Version B will be perfect. Bing, bang, boom.

NOTE FROM KATE: I prefer more spice. The cookie doesn’t have to bite back, but higher spice level helps the flavor linger. The pepper version is warming and makes you raise an eyebrow in surprise (use fresh-ground for best effect.) The cinnamon-chipotle one is familiar, with a long and warm finish. Cardamom alone didn’t have the same bite, but the high floral notes carried beautifully, and I plan to see how that spice would play well with black or spicy pepper or to attain an extended note.

One whole recipe gives you approximately 1,200 grams of dough. I divided it into four bowls with 300 grams each, rounding them off to get even weights. (The exact amount of each batch will vary depending how much dough you use for “quality control,” how hard you pack your brown sugar, the size of your eggs, etc.). Then I added proportionate amounts of spices, getting 15 cookies of each per cookie sheet. Label your baking parchment so you know which is which. These are mystery cookies. They all look the same, the first bite keeps you guessing, but by the second bite you know.

NOTE FROM SCOTT: That might even be a fun game. Make several versions with different spices, and then let the party figure out what’s what...

Let us know your favorites so we can give them a try. I might even get to try a few myself before the invisible cookie gremlins get hold of the dozen I left on the plate. Deaf, dumb and blind, thy name is husband of 30+ years.

Enjoy!

Download

SPANISH POLVORONES – Toasted Flour Cookies

A few weeks ago we discussed the long lost tradition of bacon cookies. This week we address an even more ancient lard based cookies, but that isn’t the magic ingredient. Not by a long shot! No, the big trick to Spanish Polvorones is the use of TOASTED FLOUR. If that sounds intriguing, you’re right. It is. This is one cookie that Scott started testing the same day he found the recipe, and it was for just that reason. Toasted flour is gooooood stuff! Just think of the difference between a dark roux and a light rough and you’ll know exactly what’s going on.

The general description: This is a lemony, melt in your mouth shortbread cookie; the Spanish equivalent to whatever in your background is the “most tender cookie in the universe;” Scottish Shortbread for England, Nut Horns for Central Europe, Meltaways in the U.S., etc. The unique difference is the toasted flour and a very hefty hit of citrus.

They’re also the exact sort of treat that gets Scott in trouble for adding inches to a certain well-loved waistline. And they’re dairy-free! That matters in these days when Kate’s been forced away from butter.

A NOTE FROM KATE: These cookies are a real revelation! It’s good to have dairy free options. I’ll have to experiment with using oil instead of lard to see what happens.

Please skip to the bottom if you’ve only come for the recipe. Most of what follows is discussion about how and why we got there.

SOME NOTES ON NAMES AND HISTORIES TO AVOID CONFUSION: There’s close to a half-dozen cookies out of the Spanish tradition that have tastes and textures close enough to cause some confusion. Iberia offers a straight butter cookie, like everyone else, but also offers:

Bizcochitos, the official state cookie of New Mexico, are designed to hold their shape during baking, and can even hold a basic imprint from a cookie mold. They are typically cut into animal shapes and often sprinkled with some cinnamon sugar at the end. It is a lard based cookie, with anise and orange as the central flavors. The version in Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World has graced many a Christmas tray in our home.
Mantecados are another lard-based shortbread, but include a little olive oil to make them even more tender. They feature a lemon/anise profile with just a hint of cinnamon. It’s on our list of cookies to test, and will no doubt appear here as soon when we get the recipe right.
Spanish Polvorones are the cookie we’re looking at here. These are made with toasted flour, feature a lemon/lime profile, and are also a little sweeter than Bizcochitos. They are formed into flattened balls instead of animal cut-outs.
Mexican Polvorones a/k/a Mexican Wedding Cookies are a butter-based nut cookie made from pecans. That recipe is much closer to Nut Horns than it is to any of the three above.
Filipino Polvorones are a version of the Spanish that are baked into simple molds because they are so tender. A baker who lived there for 30 years tells me the recipes vary by region, but the fat is usually a less refined version of lard, with melted butter or clarified butter (ghee) as the alternative. Many online versions seem to feature a special toasted rice product for texture on the inside.

Why the similar names? That Spanish-speaking friend tells us that “polvo” translates to “dust” or “powder”, which does seem to tie the recipes together. This is the tenderest, “shortest,” Spanish-heritage cookie in that cultural heritage. Think of Scottish Shortbread made with toasted flour and an Iberian sensibility.

Toasted Flour

This is the magic ingredient here, and it’s easier than you think. Simply bake it for 15 minutes or so at 350°. Doing this makes as big a difference in flavor as toast versus bread, and a lot of you are going to put this into your repertoire of baking secrets for the rest of time. Just be aware that toasting the flour radically changes its microscopic and chemical properties, which alters both its thickening and gluten-forming powers. It’s more like a unique, toasty-but-mild flavored nut flour than all-purpose, cake, or bread flour.

Filipino chefs use a wok to toast their flour over medium heat on the stove top. That actually works better than the oven because you can push things up to the point where smoke begins to rise. All you need is the patience to keep stirring once it gets close. We don’t own a wok, but instead have a very large 14″ skillet. That works just as well, but the sides are shallow enough to create a fear of spillage for quantities at this scale. Verdict: the oven method works well enough, and for us those that final layer of extra toastiness isn’t worth the inconvenience. The old 90:10 rule in action. But if you want perfection, go with the wok/pan method on the stovetop.

DIGRESSION: Family members reading this post will know that Scott is actually more of a savory cook than a baker. Close family will also remember how Grandpa Art used to ask for plates of Scott’s famous Gumbo maybe twice a week during his final year. Gumbo is a Cajun stew that’s built on “dark roux” (a/k/a “Cajun napalm”). Traditional recipes require you to mix the flour and fat in a pan, and then cook it for 30-40 minutes over medium-low heat until it turns into the color of an old penny. Toasting your flour in a skillet is quicker, faster, and safer (they ain’t kiddin’ about the “napalm”). Just follow the instructions above (large pan, flour, medium heat, lots of stirring) and cook until it turns to a light tan and smoke begins to rise. Turn the heat down at that point and add in your oil, butter, etc. Stir, and behold! Roux the color of an old penny in 15 minutes instead of 40.

The Rest Of The Process…

…could not be simpler. You can make this cookie using either the creaming method (beat the lard and sugar in a mixer until airy, mix in the egg and citrus, and then add in the dry ingredients), or in a food processor. We chose the latter because it makes for easier cleanup by ≈ 3-4 minutes. Go with whatever seems more convenient and familiar to you.

The only real warning we’d share is to use a light hand with the cinnamon. The main flavors here should be the toasted flour and the citrus. A healthy touch of cinnamon marries and enhances that combination. Too much would turn the cinnamon from a supporting actor into a co-star; which isn’t exactly bad, but is not what you want.

CONCLUSION

There’s not much more to add. This is a really simple cookie to make, but unique for U.S. bakers because of how it uses lard instead of butter, and toasts the flour for a totally different flavor profile. It’s strange and familiar all at once, which is really hard to accomplish.

Enjoy!