A Balanced Diet of Toasted Sesame Cookies

Toasted Sesame Cookies

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Ingredients

• 1 3/4 C. all-purpose flour
• 3/4 t. salt
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 12 T. unsalted butter (at room temperature)
• 1 C. granulated sugar
• 1/2 C. brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 T. toasted sesame oil
• 1 T. water
• 1 1/2 t. pure vanilla extract
• 3 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (chopped into bite-sized pieces--chocolate is optional in this cookie)
• Black and white sesame seeds for rolling

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Move a baking rack into the middle position in your oven. Line rimmed baking sheets with foil (dull side facing up).
2. Mix flour, salt and baking soda together in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. Using the bowl of your stand mixer and its paddle attachment, beat the butter for about one minute until it is creamy. Add sugars (light brown sugar and granulated sugar) to the butter. Beat together for 2 to 3 minutes. You want the butter/sugar mixture to be light and fluffy. Add the egg, toasted sesame oil, water and vanilla to the butter mixture and mix to combine. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, mixing on low speed until the ingredients are combined. Fold in the chocolate pieces if using.
4. Scoop the dough out of the bowl and form into 3 oz. balls. Roll the balls in the sesame seed mixture. Arrange four balls on each cookie sheet.
5. Bake cookies (one sheet at a time--4 cookies) for 7 to 9 minutes depending on your oven and the size of your cookies. You want the dough balls to spread and flatten but you want to retain a little puffiness in the center of the cookie. Once the cookies are baked to this point, open the oven door and lift the baking sheet up 3 or 4 inches and gently drop it back onto the baking rack. The cookies will flatten (and crinkle on the edges) when you drop the tray and then puff back up in the center. Bake for another two minutes and repeat. Keep baking at 2-minute increments until the cookies are brown on the edges but still slightly puffed in the center. In my oven, I baked the cookies for 7 minutes and then two 2-minute increments for a total of 13 minutes. The original recipe called for baking the cookies for about 15 minutes. Obviously, ovens vary.
6. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool on a wire rack. Put another 4-cookie tray into the oven and repeat the procedure described above.
7. Cook's Note: NYT writer Julia Moskin is a fan of this "pan banging" cookie technique. She wrote: "You might think there's nothing new to learn about chocolate chip cookies, but this recipe by the baker and blogger Sarah Kieffer will prove you wonderfully wrong. The easy trick of banging the pan a few times during baking, causing the cookies to "fall," produces rippled edges that shatter in your mouth and a center that is soft and full of chocolate."