This is the last cookie recipe we shall post for the 2013 post-holiday season, and it's an experimental cookie that we developed ourselves, though not without a lot of inspiration from existing cookies and pastries. In Persian cuisine, there is a sort of pastry called qottab (قطاب), a deep-fried pastry frequently filled with almonds or walnuts - they are delicious. However, Mariam and I don't really like deep-frying if we can avoid it - it's messy, smelly, and quite honestly, we're fat enough, thanks. We wanted to make something similar as a Christmas cookie, but strictly as a baked item with nut fillings made from pistachios or pecans.
Our first attempt was to apply the principle of KISS - keep it simple, stupid. Qottab superficially resemble tiny fried empanadas filled with cardamom and almonds. We rather enjoy empanadas, and make them regularly from store bought empanada disks that are oven-ready. It's a quick, easy, filling dinner.
Incidentally, we had some of these around the house. They are much too large to use for the purposes of cookies, but cut in half, they were about the right size for what we wanted. We made up a filling from ground pistachios leftover from making pistachio pecan puffs, some honey, and some spices, made our empanada-qottab hybrids, and threw them in the oven for the allotted twenty minutes or so that empanadas need.
The results were not exactly what we envisioned.
As you can see, many of these things burst open during baking, and you can't really tell too well from this photo, but the outside of these things has the consistency and flavor of a water cracker. The inside tasted okay, though we (read: Ian) went to heavy on the honey, and they were quite sweet. These were inoffensive - as I said, they tasted good, and we ate all of them - but they weren't what we wanted.
So we tried going the other route, and adapting a qottab dough recipe for baking. This went much better, and for the time being, is the recipe we're going with for this kind of cookie. We tried two kinds of fillings for them, one with pistachios and another with pecans, though the pistachio filling was imperfect. We only present the pecan filling here, though we may be posting a revision in the near future for a pistachio filling. The pecan filling, however - we aren't going to touch that. It's excellent.
Santa's Nutsacks (dough)
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup butter, melted
- 1/2 cup plain yogurt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 egg yolks
- 2 - 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1/4 tsp cardamom (optional)
- powdered sugar
- In a large bowl, combine the baking powder and yogurt, and stir well to develop a good froth. The acid in the yogurt will liberate a lot of the carbon dioxide in the baking powder - bubbles are absolutely expected.
- Add the butter and the egg yolks (and cardamom, if using) and mix together until consistent.
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The amount of flour is rather inexact. To begin, add a cup, and mix until smooth. After that, add the flour a sparse handful at a time, stirring to mix continuously. At some point, you will need to begin using your hands. When the dough will no longer stick to your hands, it's time to stop adding flour. The dough will be very elastic and yielding.
- Put the dough between plastic sheets, and spread it out a bit, to perhaps 2cm thickness, and allow to rest at room temperature for about two hours.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a couple cookie sheets with a layer of parchment paper.
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Roll out the dough to about a quarter-inch thickness, and cut out rounds using a biscuit cutter or a drinking glass.
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Add some of your selected nut filling to the center of each round (How much? This much.)Fold the round over, and press the edges together to seal the seam. There is a method to this to make it pretty (which I have not mastered, but Mariam has). Starting at a corner, press the dough thin between your thumb and index finger. Fold the dough over with your index finger to create a crease, and press again between your thumb and index. Continue this folding and pressing procedure all the way across the seam to seal. At the end of the seam, folding the last crease under the cookie to seal.
- Place each sealed cookie on the parchment paper. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the tops are just beginning to show some color.
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Toss the still warm cookies in powdered sugar to coat. Let them cool on a rack.
Santa's Nutsacks pecan filling
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cup pecans
- 2 tbsp dark brown sugar
- 4 tsp bourbon
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Mix all the ingredients together in a food processor. It should have the consistency of a thick, dry paste, not unlike marzipan. Using preground nuts will yield a different texture and oil content, in large part due to how the oil will be drawn out of the nuts.
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