Full Recipe
Author
Ben Mims |
Description
"Similar to many Latin American cookies, tapioca starch forms the base of these Venezuelan treats, which gives them a crumbly, melt-in-the-mouth quality. The dough is made by first dissolving papelón—Venezuela's version of raw sugar, like panela or piloncillo (see Raw Sugars, page 164)—in butter before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients. Sometimes spices like cloves, cinnamon, and/or anise seeds are added to the dough, so they are included in this recipe as optional ingredients. Including them will lend the cookies a gingerbread-like flavor profile, especially in combination with the melted papelón.These cookies have a distinctive shape: that of a mini baguette. The dough is shaped into logs, cut into thumb-length pieces, then scored three times on top. Where the shape came from is unknown—it could either be a precursor to the fork tine-stamped ridges that are common on many tapioca- or cornstarch- (cornflour-) based cookies, or it's a way, as it is in bread baking, to control the splitting of the dough."Excerpted with permission from Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World by Ben Mims. ©2024. Published by Phaidon.See more from Ben at @benbmims
