Sweet + Salty Sesame Cookies

I made you a salty cookie.

I made you a cookie with sugar and sea salt inside. And butter: lots and lots of butter. I made you a cookie with egg wash and black and white sesame seeds on top. I made you a cookie you can eat with coffee or a cocktail, with olives or ice cream.

I made you a very confusing cookie. But a delicious cookie, too.

These cookies have been lurking around my Pinterest board for months now, just waiting — nay, begging — to be made. So fine, I said, I’ll finally make you and your weird, hard-to-tell-if-you-are-tasty self. So I did. And they were good. So good. So, so good. So, so, so good. I think you catch my drift.

(I know it’s hard for you to believe I exercised any prior restraint in whether or not I should make cookies, by the way, as I have waxed poetic before about my love for them. But I obviously went ahead and made them, so that makes it Willpower: 0, Cookies: 7,632. And counting. I’m especially hopeless against these snickerdoodle cookies.)

I would show you how I made the dough for these cookies, divided it into discs, rolled out the discs and froze them, but it was all sorts of boring to look at so I figured I’d better not bother you with it. So we’ll start here, which is closer to the good stuff. And by good stuff, I mean the eating. Natch.

The recipe calls for using a 1 1/2-inch round cookie cutter, which I would recommend. Otherwise, you end up like me, with a 2-inch round cookie cutter and only about 15 cookies per batch. This is OK if you want these cookies in and out of your life as quickly as possible — not OK when you want the cookies to stick around a while longer. You know, maybe past dinner.

You’re going to brush some egg wash on these cookies. I know, it’s the weirdest. Just go with it.

Black and white sesame seeds, you is pretty.

Finally, my favorite part: The eating. As if I really needed to make that clear.

I made you sweet and salty cookies, and they are so, so, so, so g– anyway, I think you’ll like them.

Sweet and Salty Sesame Cookies
Adapted from Food & Wine

Yields: Anywhere between 1 dozen and 4 dozen cookies, depending on the size of your cookie cutter

Ingredients:

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup almond flour or almond meal
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 egg, beaten
black and white sesame seeds for sprinkling

Directions:

In the bowl of a food processor, add flours, sugar and salt; pulse until combined. Add butter and pulse until coarse crumbs form. Slowly trickle water into spout while pulsing food processor, adding just enough water til a dough just begins to form. Remove dough from processor and knead a few times on counter top. Divide dough into two discs. Roll each disc between 2 pieces of wax paper into a 1/4-inch disc; place discs, still covered by wax paper, on a baking sheet. Freeze dough until firm, about 1 hour.

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Using a 1 1/2-inch round cookie cutter (or whatever size you have, though obviously the larger the cookie cutter, the fewer cookies), cut dough into small round discs. Place discs about 1 inch apart on prepared baking sheets. Brush tops with egg wash, then sprinkle liberally with sesame seeds.

Bake cookies until lightly browned, about 15-20 minutes, rotating halfway through. Let cool on baking sheet 3 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.