Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Difficulty: Easy
Hello my lovelies! It’s been a while. I intended to keep up with recipes and posts while I was back at work but it didn’t work out that way. It was an adjustment going back and a lot of things happened in the meantime. I was sick. My aunt passed away. I tried to take anti-depressants to see if they worked for me. Spoiler: they DO NOT. I was helping out my partner with some of his projects. In short a lot was going on and this had to go on the back-burner. My current plan (*plan may be subject to change) is to work a few months at a time on contract and have a few months off in between to work on other stuff. For the next wee while I’ll be working on recipes, an art project, re-establishing some crafty hobbies and helping my partner with his work. Then I’ll go get some more money. Rinse. Repeat.
In the delicious baking space I’m going to spend a bit of time working on something that had always been in my too-hard basket – gluten free! I am making an increasing number of friends who are coeliac and I need to suck it up and master this stuff. So watch this space. I also have vague plans to go through the back catalogue and tidy up the posts, take new pictures and tweak as needed.
Today’s recipe is not gluten free. Gotta ease myself back in you guys. It is delicious and stupidly simple though. And if you’re a fool who can’t read it just turns into a different and also delicious cookie. Conversion notes at the end of the recipe… without further ado here are sweet, spicy, chewy, salty morsels for your pleasure..
Heat the oven to 175C (340F). Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and honey and beat until combined.
Add the flour, ras el hanout and baking soda. Mix until combined.
Divide the dough into two sticky lumps. Dampen your hands a little to help with the next part. Roll each piece of dough out into a sausage almost as long as the baking sheet. Lay them on the baking sheet with a generous amount of space between.
Flatten each sausage so it is a strip about half an inch high. If you’re a pedant like me you can fiddle around making sure they are a perfectly even width all the way along but it doesn’t really matter.
Sprinkle the top of each log generously with flaky sea salt. Pat it down to make it stick.
Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through. The dough will rise and expand a lot. The cookies have finished baking they will be dark golden, covered in cracks and starting to fall back down to flat.
Slide the baking paper onto a cutting board with the cookie strips still on it. Keep an eye on it over the next 10 minutes and when it feels firm-ish but still a little warm use a sharp knife to cut each log into fingers.
I cut mine about half an inch wide but go with whatever you feel like. The number of cookies you’ll get will depend on how wide they are but you should get 20+. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling.
The cookies will be crisp at the edges and chewy in the middle when they’re cold. A glass of cold milk wouldn’t go astray…
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Chewy Honey + Ras el Hanout Cookies
Prep Time : 15 mins | Cook Time : 15 mins | Total Time : 1 hour | Difficulty : Easy
Makes : 20 – 25 finger cookies
Fragrant golden cookie fingers – the perfect combination of sweet, spicy, salty, chewy and crisp.
Ingredients:
- 7 tablespoons (100 grams) salted butter
- 1/2 cup less 1 tablespoon (90 grams) sugar
- 2 tablespoons (50 grams) liquid honey (I used Mountain Valley “Autumn Gold”)
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla paste
- 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon (150 grams) all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon ras el hanout (I used Equagold)
- approx. 1 teaspoon flaky sea salt, for sprinkling
– If using metric cups, reduce volume measures by 1 tablespoon for every cup of dry or liquid ingredients –
Equipment:
- Standing or hand-held electric mixer
- Baking sheet lined with baking paper
- Sharp knife
Directions:
Heat the oven to 175C (340F). Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and honey and beat until combined.
Add the flour, ras el hanout and baking soda. Mix until combined.
Divide the dough into two sticky lumps. Dampen your hands a little to help with the next part. Roll each piece of dough out into a sausage almost as long as the baking sheet. Lay them on the baking sheet with a generous amount of space between.
Flatten each sausage so it is a strip about half an inch high. If you’re a pedant like me you can fiddle around making sure they are a perfectly even width all the way along but it doesn’t really matter.
Sprinkle the top of each log generously with flaky sea salt. Pat it down to make it stick. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through. The dough will rise and expand a lot. The cookies have finished baking they will be dark golden, covered in cracks and starting to fall back down to flat.
Slide the baking paper onto a cutting board with the cookie strips still on it. Keep an eye on it over the next 10 minutes and when it feels firm-ish but still a little warm use a sharp knife to cut each log into fingers. I cut mine about half an inch wide but go with whatever you feel like. The number of cookies you’ll get will depend on how wide they are but you should get 20+.
Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling. The cookies will be crisp at the edges and chewy in the middle when they’re cold. A glass of cold milk wouldn’t go astray…
Cook’s Notes:
- Ras el hanout is a wonderful combination of sweet and savoury flavours that works so well with the honey. If you’d prefer you can use any spices that you love instead.
- To make an equally delicious cut-out cookie, increase the flour by 50 grams (either in purpose or accidentally). Rest the dough for 30 minutes before rolling out and cutting. The cookies will spread during baking so don’t choose a shape with a lot of detail.
– These cookies will be delicious for several days in an airtight container but will lose their crisp edges over time –
Adapted from The Nordic Baking Book by Magnus Nilsson.
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What about using coconut sugar in some of your recipes please. It is almost affordable now. Thank you Marie
Hi Marie – as coconut sugar is very similar to regular sugar chemically you should be able to switch it out in most places – because it does have some caramel flavour as a result of the production process just be aware that it will change the flavour and it might have a similar impact on texture that switching out for brown sugar can have – if you have a recipe you like i would try swapping half the sugar to see what happens and if it doesn’t cause any issues then next time try the whole lot 😊
Just had to tell you how delicious these cookies are. I can’t stop eating them! Thet are addictive! Thank you so much for sharing this recipe!
I’m so glad you like them 😊 I might have to make some too – the jars are empty!