Almond Sesame Biscuits

These not-too-sweet cookies, which I’m calling biscuits to honor my minority British DNA, are excellent take-along food for what passes for strenuous activity among the indolence set, like hiking, kayaking and biking. Almond Sesame Biscuits are like spherical power bars, with superb ingredients. No trans fats or corn syrup. Real food.

With only five ingredients, plus water, they’re vegan and gluten-free.

Lee and her daughters report that they’re also great for long flights during covid, to keep you from starving while minimizing virus exposure. With a little practice, you can pop one under your mask in less than a microsecond. The CDC has advised us that most variants take at least five milliseconds to get under your mask, so you have a very large safety margin.

Note: There is not enough data on omicron yet; however, the CDC has said they expect omicron to follow a millisecond time scale, similar to the behavior of older variants. I'll update this story when the full data on omicron is published.

Making these cookies is also an excellent anxiety control activity, especially if you do most of the work with your hands, as I prefer. Focus on the tactile experience and you’ll feel great afterwards, even if you give the cookies to your best friend. Especially if.

They’re fast ‘n’ easy to make, once you know the tricks.

Trick One: Store your almond flour in the freezer, and don’t take it out until you’re ready to start. Put a flat ice pack under the mixing bowl while you're working the dough. This keeps the dough colder, less sticky, more handle-able.

Trick Two: Handle each biscuit as little as possible as you roll it in the sesame seeds. Your hands will warm up the dough, and warm dough means—you know this if you read Trick One—sticky.

Trick Three: If the dough starts sticking to your hands anyway, just rinse your hands well and keep going. Sticky is not the worst thing in the world. But next time, be faster for heaven's sake.

Workaround: Proper baking technique would have you mix room-temperature ingredients, and then chill the dough before you form the biscuits. Do it that way if you want to be boring and proper.

While we're on this subject, here are some general baking tips I have developed over the years:

General Tip One: Get all the ingredients out first, and put them away as you add them to the recipe. This is important if you have no brain and find yourself muttering things like, Did I put in the salt?

General Tip Two: When adding multiple cups or teaspoons of an ingredient, count them aloud, even if your husband looks at you quizzically as he studies color theory in the next room. This helps your feeble brain remember how many you added as you add them, because you’re hearing the number, too. If you are still young enough to have a brain, this is unnecessary. But keep it in mind for later.

Comments about ingredients:

1. Don’t substitute for the almond flour—or if you do, make darn sure the flour you choose has very similar proportions of fat: protein: carbohydrate. You'll notice that the recipe below does not call for any added fat, because it relies on the fat from the almond flour. Gluten flours (wheat, rye, spelt etc.) wouldn’t be good, because the kneading process below will develop the gluten and make the cookies turn into small rocks. Lee proved this scientifically once. All purpose flour is not.

2. I get almond flour at Costco, in those three-pound bags. Keeps well for months in the freezer.

3. Freely substitute any kind of brown sugar for the coconut sugar—or really, any kind of granulated sugar. I haven’t tried honey or agave syrup or sugar substitutes. I worry that honey or agave syrup would be, um, sticky. Sticky as heck, actually.

4. Sesame seeds can white, brown, black or natural, which means white, brown or black. Black seems most flavorful (like black squirrels!), but freshness is more important than color. If you've had yours for a while, taste them to make sure they’re still yummy. I get mine in big containers at Ranch 99 in Foster City. Today I didn't have any black ones because I used them all making black tahini for the cake in the suggestively named story, Black Sesame Cake.

Enough already? Well, here we go! In case you want to save the recipe without all of the long-winded discussion above, I’m providing a cut line, designed for right-handed, left-handed, and non-binary scissors.

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Almond Sesame Biscuits

Adapted/corrupted from a recipe in My Fitness Pal

Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C).

Get out your tools: Big mixing bowl; soup plate or flat rimmed plate for the sesame seeds; scale if you have one and measuring cups if you don’t; measuring spoons; baking sheet.

If you have a #60 cookie scoop, get that out too. If you don’t, use a regular, plain-old spoon. You'll also need clean hands. I didn't have to say that, did I?

Get out your ingredients. For the flour and sugar, I’ve listing the amount by weight and by volume. If you have a scale, use it. Weight measurements are more accurate for dry ingredients, and just plain easier. And you'll feel more like a professional baker, which is fun for a few minutes.

Ingredients:

4-1/8 cup almond flour (454 g = 1 lb), directly from the freezer

3/4 cup coconut sugar or other granulated sugar (90 g = 3-1/8 oz)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup cool tap water

1/2 tsp almond extract, or more if you love almond extract

Measure all dry ingredients into the big mixing bowl: flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. For best results put a flat ice pack under your mixing bowl, or a large bag of frozen vegetables, especially ones that are less desirable, such as okra or succotash. Remove all lumps using your fingers, while you mix all dry ingredients together with your hand(s). This may take a few minutes and your hands might get cold. You can do it. The result should be homogeneous and sandy-colored.

Add the water and almond extract, and mix the dough with your hand(s), being patient until the dough comes together into a kneadable ball. Knead it gently a few times, just for fun.

Rinse your hands well. Dump a quarter cup or so of sesame seeds onto your soup plate or rimmed plate. Keep the container nearby to add more as needed.

With one hand, scoop a one-inch ball of dough and plop it onto the sesame seed plate. With the other hand, roll it around with minimal handling, and then put it on the ungreased cookie sheet. Continue until all the dough is used. The cookies don’t spread, so you can pack them tightly. I prefer a hexagonal close-packed (HCP) arrangement, like silicon atoms in graphite. Square arrays are also fine (like NaCl) if you can get that structure to accommodate all biscuits on one sheet. I couldn’t.

Bake 15 to 18 minutes. If they’re baked less, they’ll be softer. More time in the oven leads to a hint of a crust. They don’t really turn brown.

Cool them right on the cookie sheet. Eat ‘em up. Pack ‘em for a hike or bike ride. Or for a masked flight to Philadelphia or Glasgow.

[Photo creds: Me]