The Cookie Weekend… Fig and Pistachio Cookies

I decided to dedicate this weekend (Friday through to Sunday) to… Cookies! And hopefully I’ll make it through all three days. Speaking of cookies, I’m a bit of a finicky cookie eater. I don’t like them too sugary, and I often prefer savoury to sweet. So lets see how the weekend pans out.

I decided to start with one of my favourite combinations. Fig and Pistachio.

You can never really go wrong with Fig and Pistachio, especially when you combine them with paprika, cinnamon and a bit of powdered ginger. The perfect spice combination, offset with just the right amount of demerara sugar, the spices, all powdered, bring out the natural sweetness and all the flavour of the dried figs and lightly toasted pistachios.

Here are the ingredients –

3/4 cup A.P. Flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup butter (cold – cut into cubes)

1 tablespoon demerara sugar

1 – 2 tablespoons ice water

2 tablespoons toasted, chopped pistachios

2 tablespoons chopped, dried figs

1 small whipped egg

pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder

1/4 teaspoon ginger powder

It’s quite a simple method to making these cookies –

Crumble the cold butter into the flour which has been sieved with baking powder till it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, chopped figs and pistachios and crumble them all together.  Finally add in the spices, the whipped egg and the ice water to form a dough. Cover the dough with cling film and refrigerate for at least an hour (I had a couple of things to attend to so I kept the dough in the fridge for almost 2 1/2 hours).

Take the dough ball out at least 10 minutes before you roll it out on a lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough to a 2 – 3mm thickness and use whatever cookie cutter shape you like. This is what I chose :-).

Place the cookies on a parchment lined tray an inch or so apart, prick them with a fork (this will prevent them from puffing up) and bake them in a preheated oven @ 190°C for 20 minutes.

The aroma of the figs and the pistachios, with all those spices filled my kitchen as the cookies baked. What a truly amazing start to the cookie weekend, with the green of the pistachios and the brown of the figs coming up nicely against the pale blondness of the cookies. 

Cool the cookies on the baking trays before transferring them to the cooling racks.

They tasted wonderful with my cup of coffee this evening and would be sensational with a cold glass of milk.

Have a great weekend 🙂