Chanukah Gelt Cookies

Food-wise, the Chanukah holiday is mostly about oil: fried latkes, deep-fried doughnuts, even olive oil cookies. But there comes a time when you have to steer off the beaten path and for me, that was the moment when I dreamed up these Chanukah Gelt Cookies.

Chanukah gelt (Yiddish for money) are chocolate coins wrapped in gold or silver foil. When I was a kid, we used gelt to play the traditional Chanukah dreidel game. Depending on which side the top known as a driedel lands on, a player received gelt, gave up gelt to the pot in the center or did nothing. Of course, we often found that the pot of chocolate coins we played with seemed to get smaller as players would sneak one or two for a snack. 

These Chanukah Gelt cookies are a take-off on the peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses in the middle – a childhood holiday favorite of mine. Using gelt in the middle instead of a chocolate kiss turns them into a double favorite and a great way to use leftover Chanukah gelt.

This recipe is what I would call a mash-up, inspired by several different traditional peanut butter blossom cookies, but not directly attributable to any one of them.

Creating the blossom dough is a straightforward three-step process. After mixing the sugars, butter, and peanut butter (or other nut butter or tahini) to create a light mixture, you add the liquids (the egg, milk and vanilla), then the dry ingredients. The dough is not too sticky and that makes rolling the dough balls simple.  In order to keep the cookies relatively uniform one-inch balls, I measure the first few against a ruler. In choosing a peanut butter or other nut butter, use one that has enough oil to make it easily spreadable, not gritty.

Normally I use a “serious” ruler, but I couldn’t resist using my cute Hebrew alphabet ruler for this tast.

Two steps keep the cookies rounded. The first is a tip that I learned from The Kitchn, one of my favorite sites for home cooking tips. I specify both baking powder as well as baking soda. That helps lift the batter. The second is to chill the dough balls for at least 30 minutes (and more if you use tahini) before baking them. Chilled dough doesn’t spread during baking as much as it would at room temperature. 

After baking the cookies, you simply put them on a rack, let them set for a minute or so (or a bit longer if you’re using milk chocolate gelt), then insert a piece of gelt in the middle.

If your gelt is small, use a full one. For larger coins, split them in half and insert the cut side into the cookie. Unlike a Hershey’s Kiss, which is thick on the bottom, the gelt is fairly thin. This means that you might get a few large coins that splinter instead of cut and a few cookies where the gelt melts too much and falls over. What a tragedy! You just might have to eat the splintered coins and the less-than-beautiful cookies before presenting the finished cookies to your adoring family and friends.

The Chanukah gelt I’m familiar with is either milk chocolate or bittersweet. The milk chocolate version is softer. That has an advantage, in that the coins cut more easily. However, the softness also makes the coins more prone to melting when you press them into baked cookies. (Remember the Holiday Triple Chocolate Bark?) When I told my husband about the melting coins problem, he suggested chilling them before pressing them into the freshly baked, warm cookies. How creative! I rewarded him with an extra couple of cookies – the melted coin ones I didn’t need for photos of course. Another way to work with the milk chocolate gelt is to wait slightly longer (so the cookie is warm, not hot) before pressing the coin into it. Just don’t let the cookie cool down completely or you won’t be able to press in the gelt.

Taste-wise, I prefer bittersweet and ideally, I would use all small bittersweet gelt in these Chanukah Gelt Cookies. But when I got gelt this year, it was a mixture and not of uniform size. Oh well.

This post was origjnally published in 2015. At that time, the cookie was described as a peanut butter blossom. Since then, other nut butters have become popular and they can easily be substituted for the peanut butter in the original recipe. This year (2023), I experimented with subsituting tahini for peanut or a nut butter. See the recipe for my notes on how to make that substitution. The photo immediate above shows the tahini version. All others are of peanut butter cookies.

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Chanukah Gelt Cookies

Chocolate coins (Chanukah gelt) embedded in peanut/nut butter or tahini blossom cookies.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American, Jewish

Keyword cookies, nut butter, peanut butter, tahini

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Chilling time 30 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes

Author Laura

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 180g
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt Kosher or fine sea
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons milk full, low-fat or nonfat
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 + 1/4 for rolling dough balls in cup white sugar 100g +50g
• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar (packed) 64 g
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature, 1 stick
• 3/4 cup good quality creamy peanut butter, other nut butter or tahini – spreadable, not gritty. Approximately 190 g. Note that if using tahini, try to make it as close as possible to the texture of a nut butter. That may mean using less oil and more of the hard, ground sesame seed mixture. (See note below about tahini brands.)

Instructions

1. Whisk the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt) together in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Mix the egg, milk, and vanilla together in another small bowl and set aside.

3. Combine the 1/2 cup of white sugar, the brown sugar, the butter and peanut butter, nut butter or tahini and beat with a hand or stand mixer until the mixture is light and fluffy. Start on a low setting and move up to medium-high, scraping the bowl 2-3 times during 3-5 minutes.

4. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla mixture and combine.
5. Add the dry ingredients in 3-4 batches, mixing on low each time, just until combined.

6. Form the dough into one-inch balls and roll them in the reserved 1/4 cup (50g) sugar. If the dough is too soft, refrigerate it for 20-40 minutes before making the dough balls. Put all the balls on a plate and chill them in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, longer if necessary until they are well chilled and easily taken off the plate without losing their shape.

7. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. and unwrap the Chanukah gelt. If the coins are more than one-inch in circumference, cut them in half. Put the unwrapped coins in the refrigerator to chill until you need them.
8. Place the cookie balls on two parchment or silicone mat-lined cookie sheets. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through.

9. Once the cookies are done, put them on wire racks. Let them cool for one minute then gently insert the coins, one or one-half into each cookie. Cool completely.

Recipe Notes

It may be challenging to find a tahini consistency that matches peanut or other nut butter. My preferred tahini brand, Soom, does not separate the oil and the ground sesame, and so it is too liquidy to be used on its own. Instead, I mixed some Soom tahini with the ground sesame paste (minus the oil that had separated and risen to the top) from another brand. The mixture worked fine. Another possibility is to use only a brand that has paste and oil separated and to mix in less sesame oil than 

The chilling time may slightly longer than 1 hour or as short as 30 minutes. When they go into the oven, the dough balls should be well chilled and holding their shape.

Bittersweet chocolate coins are more difficult to cut than milk chocolate ones, but they do not melt as easily when inserted into the cookies.

Recipes for other holiday treats:
Pistachio Roca from Cravings of a Lunatic

Slow Cooker Eggnog Granola from Cupcakes and Kale Chips

Hot Cocoa Brownies from Crumb: A Food Blog

Soft Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies from Food Done Light

Cranberry Chai Tea Cookies from Farm Fresh Feasts

Chanukah Gelt Cookies from Mother Would Know

Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies from Food Lust People Love

Rocky Road Fudge by My Catholic Kitchen

Best Sugar Cookies from That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Salted Caramel Chocolate Thumbprints from Mind Over Batter

Gingerbread Chocolate Sandwich Cookies from Lauren Kelly Nutrition

Habanero Orange Marmalade from Everyday Southwest

Upside Down Sticky Apple Pie from From Gate to Plate

Homemade Instant Hot Cocoa Mix from Flour on my Face

Chocolate Raspberry Walnut Rugelach from The Little Ferraro Kitchen

S’mores Hot Chocolate from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks