Sesame Lace Cookies

Background:
In case you were wondering what was being stuck into the Pumpkin Flan, it's a Black Sesame Lace Cookie from the Flour cookbook (Joanne Chang) that was baked in a pan and broken into pieces..
I made baked the rest of my dough tonight.  Here's the cookie on it's own.  When she says they spread like crazy, they really do spread like crazy.  Don't skimp on giving each cookie it's 3 inches of personal space to expand and grow.  My mother said the taste reminds her of one of the sesame candies they had during Chinese New Year back in the day, and they fried the sesames.  Different delivery and presentation...same crunch.

Recipe based on what I did...since as always, the Flour recipe is based on using a stand mixer and it's shocking enough that I no longer use chopsticks or a fork to mix my ingredients. [Many thanks again to Ginny and Ann-Marie for their gift of a whisk during grad school].

Methods: 

7 tablespoons butter at room temp

1/2 cup granulated sugar (I like Florida's)

7 tablespoons packed light brown sugar [Side note: there really is a difference between light and dark brown sugar... I made my fail-proof Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookies with light instead of dark, and they just didn't taste the same.  Trader Joes, as much as I love TJ, doesn't specify if its brown sugar is dark or light, and seems to be a hybrid...not a fan)

1/3 c grapefruit juice not from concentrate (Original recipe calls for freshly squeezed orange juice from 1.5 oranges)

3 tablespoons black sesame seeds

Cream butter on its own until it's fluffy.

Add both sugars until combined.  

Slowly drizzle in grapefruit juice--per book recipe, even with a mixer, the mixture will look broken.

Mix in seame seeds.

Transfer batter to airtight container and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or up to a week.  

When ready to bake, heat oven to 350. 

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Per Joanne Chang "This batter spreads like crazy, so you have to use an extremely flat baking sheet in order for the cookies to bake in circles and not amoeba-like shapes."  

Per me: DON'T SKIMP ON PARCHMENT PAPER.  The batter will stick to your pan, dry on, then you have to reheat/melt the mixture to scrape it off.  Disaster.  What works a lot better is if you have small sheets of parchment paper that are lined side by side.  (When it's time to take the cookies off, you can pick up the smaller piece of parchment, turn it upside down onto the cooling rack, and gently lift the paper off the cookie...much lower risk for breakage).

Pinch off rounded tablespoon-size balls of dough and place on the prepared baking sheet, spacing them at least 3 inches apart to allow for spreading.

Bake for 16-18 minutes or until cookies are completely golden brown.

Cool completely

Gently remove the cookies from parchment. (See note above)

Cookies can be stored in layers separated by wax or parchment paper in airtight container at room temp for 3 days.

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie and Double Chocolate Chip Cookie

Another chocolate chip cookie recipe...From Jacques Tores' A Year In Chocolate... His recipe doesn't call for overnight-ting the cookies dough, but by all chef accounts, it's best to make dough 24h before baking them so it gives time for vanilla and other flavors to seep in. The cookbook says to bake cookies at 325F for 15 minutes...in my oven, it was closer to 25-30 minutes...

These make giant chocolate chip cookies--the type you get at Starbucks etc...  I slightly tweaked the recipe and my oven seems to have different cooking times...

Here's what I did in simplified format...  check out the cookbook if you want more text and prose

Obviously, preheat your oven before baking so if you make the cookies the day of, you could start preheating before making the dough...I've just stopped baking cookies the day I make the dough

Bowl 1 or in a ziploc bag, mix the following:
4 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 baking soda

Bowl 2:
Step 1:
Beat butter and sugar together (book says 5 minutes assuming it's an electric mixer....I don't know own an electric mixer and make do...no one seems to complain)
3 sticks unsalted room-temperature butter
1.25 cups + 2.5 tablespoons sugar
2 cups brown sugar (FYI recipe said 2.25)

Step 2:
Add 3 large eggs (FYI recipe said they should be at room temperature, and already slightly beaten, which is consistent with most professional chefs' advice about needing eggs to be already beaten before adding it in, or else the sugar "cooks" the eggs...that said, I didn't have the motivation to do this step and use up another container so I tend to push the sugar butter to one side of the bowl, put in the eggs to the other half of the bowl, slightly beat them on the side, and then mix them into the sugar butter mix...all about the one bowl)

Step 3:
Beat in 2 teaspoons vanilla to the sugar butter egg mix

Step 4
Add in flour mixture a bit at a time...

Step 5:
Once flour is incorporated, fold in chocolate:

A note about chocolate: Torres recipe says to use 1 2/3 pounds bittersweet chocolate chopped into bite sized pieces...  I didn't have it on hand so instead, chopped up 7 Bakers chocolate semisweet squares and 1/2 a bag of Ghiradelli chocolate chips (chopped both)...  No one complained about the lack of chocolate...

Step 6:
Place 3 inch cookie dough spheres 1 in from each other...
Another side note: I used a ruler.  Three inches looks abnormally huge...  They actually do spread and turn into those giant chocolate chip cookies at bakeries...crispy on the outside edges and soft in the middle



Last side note:
Interesting substitutions he suggests:
For more cakelike texture: replace 1 egg with 2 egg yolks
For chocolate chocolate chip cookies: replace 1c flour with dutch-processed cocoa pwder
For very moist cookies, replace 5.5 T of browns ugar and .5 granulated sugar with equal amount of light corn syrup