This is a truly great cookie.
This recipe is from Helen Goh’s new baking cookbook, Baking And The Meaning of Life. (Great title, by the way!) You can order her cookbook through your local bookstore or on Amazon.
This is Goh’s debut solo cookbook. She previously co-authored the cookbooks Sweet with Yotam Ottolenghi and was one of the authors of the Ottolenghi Group cookbook Comfort. Goh was the chief pastry recipe developer for the Ottolenghi Group.
Goh’s cookbook explores the many and varied ways that baking connects us to our communities. In a chapter she titles “Ritual and Tradition,” she writes: “Our lives are punctuated and strung together by moments of tradition that give us structure, certainty, a sense of purpose. They affirm not only our belonging to our community but the belonging of others to it as well.” She includes this recipe for Peanut and Black Sesame Sand Cookies in that chapter. In the lede to the recipe, Goh writes that her recipe is a variation on a traditional Chinese New Year cookie thought to bring good luck to those who receive them. The cookies are traditionally exchanged in Malaysia where she spent her early years before her family migrated to Australia.
This would be a great (and unexpected) cookie to add to your holiday cookie tray.
And, who couldn’t use a bit of good luck right about now?
Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.
Peanut and Black Sesame Sand Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 C. black sesame seeds (plus 2 T. for topping)
- 1/4 C. peanut butter
- 2 C. plus 6 T. all-purpose flour
- 1 t. baking powder
- 1/2 t. baking soda
- 1/4 t. fine sea salt
- 1/2 C plus 1 T. room-temperature unsalted butter
- 3/4 C. plus 2 T. powdered sugar
- 1/2 C. light brown sugar (packed)
- 1/2 C. neutral oil
- 1 large egg
- 1 1/2 t. vanilla
- 1/2 C. unsalted peanuts (roughly chopped)
Directions
- Step 1 Heat a dry skillet and toast 1/2 cup black sesame seeds ove medium-low heat for about 3 minutes. Shake the pan regularly as you toast the sesame seeds to keep them from burning. Once toasted, transfer the warm sesame seeds to a food processor and process for 3 to 5 minutes. You want the sesame seeds to have the consistency of wet sand. Put the processed sesame seeds in a small bowl and stir in the peanut butter. Set aside.
- Step 2 Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a medium-sized bowl. Set aside.
- Step 3 Put the butter, powdered sugar and brown sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer (use the paddle attachment) and beat at medium speed for about 2 minutes. You want the butter mixture to be creamy and light colored. Reset the mixer speed to low and slowly blend in the oil. Mix for 1-2 minutes and then use a spatula to scrape the bottom and the sides of the bowl. Mix in the sesame seed/peanut butter mixture, mixing for about 1 minute. Add the egg and the vanilla. Mix on medium speed for about a minute.
- Step 4 Slowly add the dry ingredients. Do this in three batches, mixing after each addition. Continue to mix the ingredients with your mixer set at a low speed until you have a soft dough.
- Step 5 Place the mixer bowl with the dough in your refrigerate to chill and firm up for about an hour.
- Step 6 While your dough is chilling, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a couple of baking trays with parchment paper.
- Step 7 Put the remaining sesame seeds (2 T.) and the chopped peanuts in a small, shallow bowl.
- Step 8 Pinch off golf-ball sized pieces of chilled dough and, using your hands, roll into small golf-ball sized balls. Dip each dough ball into the sesame/peanut mixture. Place dough balls on the prepared baking trays (sesame/peanut side up) about 2-inches apart. Very gently press each dough ball with the palm of your hand.
- Step 9 Bake for about 15 minutes in your preheated 375 degree F. oven. You want the cookies to turn lightly brown around the edges and to flatten slightly and firm up. Remove cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on your counter.
This recipe is from Helen Goh’s new baking cookbook, Baking And The Meaning of Life. (Great title, by the way!)
Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.
