Afghan Dessert

CARDAMOM COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup shelled pistachios (36 more later)
2¾ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ tablespoon cardamom
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
⅔ cup vegetable oil
⅓ cup butter, softened
2¼ teaspoons rose water, orange water, or lemon
no-stick spray
36 shelled pistachios (1 for each cookie)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

spice grinder
electric beater
cookie sheet

Makes 36 cookies. Takes 1 hour.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Use spice grinder on ¼ cup shelled pistachios until you get little bits. Add flour, baking powder, cardamom, and confectioners’ sugar to mixing bowl. Stir with whisk or fork until well blended.

Add oil to pan. Warm oil using low-medium heat for 90 seconds. Gradually blend in oil to mixing bowl with beater set to low. Gradually add in butter with beater still set to low. Add rose water. Blend for 5 minutes with beater set to medium or until you get dough.

Spray cookie sheet with no-stick spray. Form dough into 1″ balls on cookie sheet. Don’t let them touch each other. Make imprint in middle of dough balls with thumb. (Hold sides of cookie as you do. This prevents the cookie from crumbling.) Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes or until cookies are crumbly, start to crack, and are just starting to brown around the edges. Sprinkle pistachio bits over cookies. Gently push a shelled pistachio into the imprint of each cookie. (Hold sides of cookie as you do. This prevents the cookie from crumbling.)

TIDBITS

1) Cardamom cookies are fun looking. See them in the picture above playing “Guess the herb.” There is no rule against the cookies bringing books on herbs. Cardamom cookies can’t read. Can other cookies read? I don’t think so and and anyway, they’re not talking.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.