Black Sesame Lace Cookies

Before I opened Flour, I was lucky to get some local press about my new bakery and café. Just prior to opening day, the Boston Globe interviewed me for a cookie story and featured a bigger-than-life-size photo of my hand holding one of these lacy sesame cookies. They are gorgeous, but the ironic thing was that I didn't intend them as a selling point for Flour. A baking sheet of them just happened to be near me when the photographer asked for a prop. I'd been using the cookies for years in my restaurant work to garnish ice cream and sorbet desserts, and I wasn't planning to make them at Flour, because they seemed too brittle and delicate for the rough-and-tumble world of chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal scones. But when our doors opened, practically every other customer who walked in asked about the scrumptious-looking cookie in the newspaper and wanted to order one. We tried making them for a while, but, as I had suspected, they didn't hold up well stacked with the other cookies on our counter. Ever so slowly, we phased them out and customers eventually forgot about them.

But they are fantastic for making at home! This is a wonderfully easy recipe made with ingredients that you probably already have in the kitchen, except for the black sesame seeds. Seek them out—you can find them in most Asian grocery stores and specialty food shops—because they contrast beautifully with the golden brown cookie and add a distinctive flavor. Serve them as I did during my restaurant days, with a bowl of ice cream or sorbet.