Iced Sesame Seed Cookies

I had a jar of sesame seeds in my pantry and I wasn’t sure what exactly to do with it. I was leafing through a dessert cookbook a good friend gave me as a gift and I found a recipe for sesame seed cookies.

The cookbook is an old one – Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book and it’s kind of a trip. There are a ton of old-timey recipes in there, some of which I would never make, but some – like the sesame seed cookie one – I think are pretty interesting.

I didn’t change this recipe a whole lot (a little, but not a lot), so definitely credit where credit is due, to Ms. Betty Crocker. These cookies are actually incredible – sweeter than you’d think something called “sesame seed cookies” would be, but not overly so, and definitely a really nice flavor.

Difficulty: easy
Print

Ingredients

½ cup butter, cold
1/3 cup sesame seeds
½ cup butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla
2 T water
2 cups flour
1 t baking powder
½ t baking soda
¼ t salt

Icing

3 cups powdered sugar
1 T butter, softened to room temperature
2 T milk (approximately)
1 ½ t vanilla

Directions

Put your cold butter and sesame seeds into a small sauce pan and heat over low heat. Stir regularly until the butter is melted and the sesame seeds have turned a nice golden brown. When they’re done, remove the pan from the heat and set it aside.

In a large bowl add your room temperature butter, sugar, egg and vanilla and mix until well blended. Get 2 tablespoons of sesame seed/butter mixture from your sauce pan, add that to the sugar/egg mixture along with the water and blend again. Save the remaining sesame seed/butter mixture – you’ll need it for the icing.

In a separate medium bowl add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and whisk together. Take this mixture and add it to the sugar/egg mixture and blend until well combined.

Drop the dough onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper, about a ping pong ball-sized each, 6 cookies to a sheet.

Bake at 375 for about 10 minutes or until the bottoms and sides are lightly browned. Take the cookie sheets out of the oven, let the cookies rest on the sheets for about 5 minutes and then move them to a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cookies are cooling, make your icing.

In a large bowl add the powdered sugar, butter, 1 T of the milk, the vanilla and all the remaining sesame seed/butter mixture. Blend until well combined. If the icing is too thick, add in some milk (just a little at a time) until it gets to a consistency where it’s spreadable.