This month’s Baketogether, Ginger Slice ‘n Bakes, is tailor-made for my obsession with candied ginger. Besides a hefty helping of that spicy-sweet delight, Abby Dodge’s recipe adds powdered ginger and black pepper to a buttery dough. But I just made Brian Samuel’s Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies (fabulous!!) and used up all my crystallized ginger in the process.
So it was time to get creative. Latching onto the black pepper, I realized that I just got Tellicherry black pepper from my friend Rachel that should be quite fragrant in a cookie.
Gazing into the refrigerator, I dreamed of peppery, savory and sweet combinations. The result has orange, lemon, lime rind, a bit of candied orange and orange simple syrup from last night’s oranges in syrup dessert, topped off with coarse sea salt, raw sugar and a bit of finely ground pepper. Weird? Certainly. Tasty? I think so.
Citrus Black Pepper Slice ‘n Bakes
Ingredients
- 2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon Kosher salt (yes, I know table salt is the norm for baking, but I broke with norms in more ways than one in this recipe)
- ¾ teaspoon finely ground black pepper, preferably fragrant Tellicherry pepper
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla (The inaugural use of my homemade Bourbon vanilla extract!!)
- 2 tablespoons of citrus rind (I used a mix of orange, lemon, and lime)
- 1 heaping teaspoon of candied orange rind, finely chopped,
- 2 tablespoons orange simple syrup
- raw sugar, coarse sea salt & finely ground pepper, mixed for topping (not pictured)
Preparation
- Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and pepper. Set aside.
- Beat the butter and granulated sugar with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy, about 3 minutes.
- Add the egg, vanilla, candied orange rind and orange simple syrup to the butter and sugar and bland for about 1 minute.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and beat on low for about 1 minute until blended and clumpy and put it on a large piece of plastic wrap.
- Shape the dough into a log, covering it with the plastic wrap as you work the dough into a cylinder approximately 14 inches long.
- Refrigerate until the log is firm, 3-4 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare parchment or Silpat-lined baking sheets.
- Cut the dough into thin slices, about ¼ inch thick or a bit thinner if you can manage that and place on cookie sheets about 1 inch apart.
- Top each cookie with a small amount of the raw sugar, coarse sea salt, and pepper mix. Press lightly into the cookie.
- Bake one pan at a time for approximately 10-16 minutes. the longer you bake them the crispier they get. Of course, thichness also impacts baking time, so if yours are on the thin side, the baking time will be on the shorter side.
- Let cookies rest on sheets for 5 minutes until transferring them to rack for cooling.
Happy new year!
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