Month: December 2019

Baking for Waiting: Tahini Sugar Cookies With White Chocolate-Rose Ganache

Dessert

If you celebrate any of the many holidays observed this month, or observe people who do, you’ve probably noticed how busy many of them appear. The holiday season seems to be a whirl of endless party going, food making and eating, and shopping.

It is a time for doing, and in some respects I’ve been no exception to that rule, dashing about buying presents and writing cards and preparing our flat to be shut up while we travel. And yet, amidst all this activity, I also find myself in a season of waiting. There is a possibility out there, and I am waiting for it to come to fruition, or not. I am waiting for a yes or a no, and I expect it every minute. 

I’m not particularly good at waiting. If ever there was an action-oriented person, it is me; I will push tirelessly and unceasingly, from every conceivable angle, to try to bring about a desired event before I will sit down and wait for the outcome. Given that, it’s almost torturous for me to find myself in a situation that I cannot influence, where there is no action for me to take. There is nothing I can do to bring about the end of my waiting, so I’ve been trying to distract myself, arranging coffee dates with friends and running errands. Still, I’m left with more time than I know what to do with. I need something to occupy my hands, something just technical enough to also occupy my brain, and so I bake. I set the butter out to soften while I go for a run, trying to burn off nervous energy. I put on Christmas carols as I measure and mix the ingredients, humming along as I roll and cut and bake and decorate. For me, the minutes slide by more easily in the kitchen. Baking is a form of meditation, the end product a manifestation of my active waiting.

These cookies are just demanding enough to take your attention off whatever you might be waiting for and demand you stay firmly rooted in the present. The tahini makes them rich, almost shortbready, and leaves just a touch of bitterness that the sweet white chocolate-rose ganache tempers. Bitter and sweet: a perfect representation of waiting during the holiday season.

Tahini Sugar Cookies With White Chocolate-Rose Ganache 

Sources: Tahini sugar cookies inspired by Eat Cho Food; white chocolate-rose ganache from Honey & Co

Makes ~5 dozen cookies of various sizes 

Total time: ~2 hours

Tahini Sugar Cookie Ingredients:

  • 1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 cup tahini

White Chocolate-Rose Ganache Ingredients:

  • 9 ounces white chocolate
  • 3 1/2 ounces heavy cream
  • 2–3 teaspoons rose water extract
  • Dried rose petals for decoration (optional)

Directions:

  • Make the cookies: Preheat your oven to 350°F. If you’re a think-in-advance type, set the butter out several hours before you plan to bake. If you’re more of an impulse baker, zap the butter in the microwave in 10–15 second bursts at 50% power until just softened. While the butter is softening, mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl and then set it aside.
  • Put the butter in a large bowl or standmixer and add the sugar. Using an electric hand mixer or standmixer, cream the mixture until it is light and fluffy, about 3–5 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla, beating to incorporate, and then add the tahini. Beat again to combine.
  • Add the dry ingredients in three additions, beating well to incorporate and ensuring no streaks or dry pockets remain at the bottom of the bowl.
  • Once your dough is ready, use your hands to compress it into three or four large balls. Working with one ball of dough at a time, roll the dough out on a well-floured surface to ~1/4 inch thickness. Use your cookie cutters of choice to cut out a variety of shapes and sizes.
  • Note: The amount of tahini in this recipe gives the cookies excellent flavor and texture, but also makes the dough a bit crumbly, so be patient and go slowly as you roll it out. You can reserve scraps to re-roll, but don’t do this too many times, or the additional flour will change the texture of the dough. It’ll still be delicious, but not quite as crumbly delicious.
  • Place the cookies on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet and bake the cookies for ~10 minutes, rotating the sheets from side-to-side and top-to-bottom at the halfway point. 
  • Take your cookies out of the oven when they’re set and just beginning to bronze. Let them sit for 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
  • Make the ganache: While the cookies bake and cool, combine the white chocolate and cream in the top of a double boiler, then set on top and bring the water to a simmer. Warm the chocolate/cream mixture until the white chocolate melts, stirring to evenly distribute the heat and ensure the chocolate melts. 
  • Once your mixture is melted and homogeneous, remove from heat and stir in the rose water extract. Start with two teaspoons, and taste; feel free to add more as desired (I preferred the higher amount).
  • Decorate the cookies: Use a small spoon to dish up some of the ganache and spread it on top of the cookies, then scatter dried rose petals across them to decorate. Let the ganache dry completely, which may take several hours, before stacking, packing, or eating the cookies.

Persimmon Quick Bread

Breads
Two ripe persimmons sit on a white surface, surrounded by scattered walnuts.

I am an inveterate recipe tinkerer, unable to leave well enough alone. No matter how many times or how fervently I insist that I’ll make a recipe exactly the way that it was written—at least the first time through—I am incapable of doing so. I’m forever adding a little more salt or spice, reducing the oil just a smidge, or attempting to streamline a few steps.

There’s hubris in being a recipe tinkerer, which came home to me a few weeks ago, when I first made this persimmon quick bread. The original recipe is by James Beard, who is kind of a BFD—after all, they named one of the most prestigious food awards in America after him, and he’s widely regarded as a pivotal figure in American culinary history. He wrote a few books, appeared on a TV show or two, and sometimes vacationed with Julia Child, if that tells you anything. In short, Beard was a guy who knew his stuff, food-wise, and his recipes are well thought-out. Still, I found myself from changing this recipe to my liking.

At first blush, fiddling with a Beard recipe seems crazy: who am I to do such a thing? I have no formal culinary training and am barely two months into this blogging business; why do I suppose that I can make something better than James Beard? But at second look, this is precisely what I should be doing, and what I expect you to do as well—to make something different, hopefully better, perhaps worse, but nevertheless according to your own likes and dislikes. This is, after all, how innovation happens, and it’s how we grow as cooks and make food that we like to eat. We are curious. We try, we taste, we try again. And if it makes you feel any better, Beard himself is no stranger to tinkering; David Lebovitz points out that Beard gives an “inexact” amount of sugar in this recipe, an unusual act that allows the baker to bake according to their preference. Whether he states it explicitly or not, Beard is intrinsically aware that we all cook to our own liking, and that’s a good thing.

Beard’s recipe was far too sweet for me, so I reduced the sugar by half and replaced some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat to make this less of a dessert and more of an anytime treat. I substituted ground allspice, which I always have on hand, for ground mace, which I generally don’t (you could also try nutmeg or ginger), and swapped the bourbon for rum, since I didn’t want to use the good stuff for bread. If you disagree with any of these changes, I think it goes without saying that you’re welcome to adjust them.

A loaf of golden brown bread with two cut slices falling from the left side rests on a white plate against a white background.

Persimmon Quick Bread

Adapted from James Beard’s Beard on Bread

Makes one 9″ x 5″ or 8 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ loaf

Active time: ~25 minutes; total time ~85 minutes

Note: There are many different varieties of persimmons, but the two I see most commonly are Fuyu and Hachiya. Fuyu are non-astringent and can be used when relatively firm, although I recommend letting them get very ripe for this recipe. Hachiya taste unpleasantly astringent unless they are very ripe.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup walnuts (optional)
  • 2 very ripe persimmons
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1–2 teaspoons ground allspice (I prefer the higher amount)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar (light or dark)
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1/3 cup bourbon, rum, or milk, if you prefer an alcohol-free version

Directions:

  • Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour or otherwise grease a 9 x 5″ or 8 1/2 x 4 1/2″ loaf pan; set aside.
  • If using the walnuts: Heat a medium skillet over medium heat. While it’s heating, coarsely chop the walnuts, then add them to the pan when it’s warm and toast until they’re golden brown and fragrant. This will likely take 5–10 minutes. Transfer the nuts from the skillet to a plate and let them cool slightly.
  • While the nuts are toasting, melt butter on the stove or in a microwave; I do it in the microwave for about 2 minutes on 30% power. Set the melted butter aside.
  • Bisect the persimmons along their equators and scoop their pulp into a small bowl. Discard the peels, then mash the puree with a fork until you have a mix of smooth and a few lumps; it needn’t be uniform.
  • Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir with a fork to combine, mashing any brown sugar lumps as necessary. Add the persimmons, butter, eggs, and liquor or milk, and stir to combine.
  • Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for ~60 minutes, perhaps a little less for a smaller loaf pan, or until the loaf is beautifully burnished and a cake tester inserted into the middle of the loaf emerges with just a few crumbs hanging. Remove your loaf from the tin and allow it to cool on a rack.
  • This bread is excellent warm, with butter; toasted, with a drizzle of honey; and pretty much any other way you care to have it—I certainly won’t tell you what to do.