Asian-Inspired Sugar Cookies

Completed cookies

I fear, dear readers, that I have let you down. I've become one of those dreaded bloggers that goes for weeks or months without a post, and then promises he'll post more often, only for another months-long silence. I never meant for this to happen. I harbor no illusions about you all having nothing better to do than read my ramblings, but still feel slightly flaky. I've been traveling a ton over the past few months, and haven't had time to do much interesting cooking. My apologies.

But for the moment (several of them, actually), I'm back!  I've got an unprecedented four consecutive weeks at home, and have big plans for lots of food-related experimentation. I want to play with high-end jello shots, make lots of ice creams and sorbets, and do some baking as well.

I've started with baking. I needed some cookies (I somewhat compulsively need a home-baked dessert to bring with my lunch each day), and decided to work with what I had available. Flipping through Dorie Greenspan's fabulous Baking From My Home to Yours, I discovered her sugar cookie recipe, which she described as quite adaptable. I decided to adapt it.

A disk of palm sugar.

My first adaptation was to include some of the palm sugar I brought back from Indonesia. Palm sugar is unrefined, a bit less sweet than cane sugar and has a bit of a sharpness to it that goes along with its sweetness. I also recently learned that it contains potassium and iron. I bought it in these little disks (see photo) that crumble fairly easily, and can be substituted directly for sugar. The sharpness can dominate, though, so I only used it for about 1/3 of the sugar.

I also mixed the zest of a lime in with the butter and sugar, once I had creamed them together a bit. Lime and palm sugar play very nicely together and that got me going on the Asian theme. I decided to add some sweetened coconut and ginger to continue that idea. I used Indian-style ginger paste (1 tsp) I had in the fridge, instead of the vanilla extract called for in the recipe. I then stirred about 1/2 cup of sweetened shredded coconut into the dough when it was all mixed.

Cookies before baking.

The dough can be either rolled out or sliced, and I opted to slice for simplicity. I made 2 "logs" of dough, refrigerated them overnight, and then sliced into approximate rounds and baked for 10 minutes.

The result is tasty. The lime is clearly the dominant flavor, but the palm sugar gives it a bit of sharpness/roughness. They're very buttery, and the ginger provides a subtle, but noticeable bite.

Success!

Here's the recipe:


2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder

10 TBSP butter (1 stick plus 2 tablespoons)
1 cup sugar
1 large egg, plus 1 egg yolk
1 tsp ginger paste

1/2 cup sweetened coconut


1. Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl:

2. Beat butter (10 TBSP) in a stand mixer for a couple minutes to soften. Then add 2/3 cup white sugar and 1/3 cup (2 disks) unrefined palm sugar. Beat for a couple more minutes until well combined. Then add the egg and yolk; beat for another minute. Add the ginger and beat briefly.

3. Reduce mixer speed to low and slowly add flour. Mix until just combined, then stir in coconut.

4. Form 2 equally sized logs of dough about 2" in diameter. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate.

5. Slice logs into 1/4" slices. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet 1.5" apart, and bake for 10 mins at 350 F.