A couple of years ago, I had a chance to taste the best butter cookies in a hotel lobby. They were thin like leaves, and so crispy, buttery and spicy. After that, I tried to replicate those cookies, but I never really managed. This is by far the closest taste I could get.

I used mulberry molasses for extra spiciness, and that’s why my cookies were a bit chewy (but crispy too), but I’m sure if you omit molasses, your cookies will be very crispy. If you cannot find mulberry molasses, you can just use regular molasses.

Spice Butter Cookies with Mulberry Molasses

adapted from Martha

makes 60 thin cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/4 cup mulberry molasses (see the note above)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• a pinch of salt

Directions:

Mix together butter, flour, sugar, and spices until fully incorporated.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks and mix in the molasses. Add this mixture to the dough and knead until it gets even.

Form a ball (or 3-4 balls, in order to take them out one by one, and not to let them warm up), and let it cool in the refrigerator for two hours. At this point, you can freeze the dough and use it later.

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

When the dough balls are cooled, take them out one by one and roll out to 0.25 cm (1/8 inch). If you trust yourself, go thinner! Cut the dough with desired cutters. Bake them in the oven for 13 minutes, or until the edges start to brown. Cool them on a rack and let them completely cool before eating.

And some Instagram photos to end this post:

Last week, I was in Italy and I bough a lot of chocolate from Torino after they told me that the city is famous for its chocolate and grissini. So to finish all the chocolates (about 400 grams (14 oz.)), I decided to use them for my mother’s birthday cake. However, some of these chocolates had red pepper in it, so I made a spicy cake.The chocolate cake recipe was taken from a pastry chef, so I cannot give it, but it is very similar to a sponge cake. Anyway, you can use any chocolate cake recipe you want. After layering the cake, I poured some milk on the layers to make them moist, and spread some “crème patisserie”.

For “crème patisserie”, I used this recipe, and I added 1 cup of crushed and spiced almonds. To make them, I simply mixed the almonds with red hot pepper, salt, cumin and black pepper.

Finally I decorated the cake with chocolate ganache I made from the Torino chocolates. I heated 200 gr (7 oz.) heavy cream, and mixed it with 400 gr (14 oz.) dark chocolate, and some of them had red pepper. To make the ganache lighter, I mixed it with some whipped cream, and decorated the cake with whipped cream also.