There are some tastes that take you to a long way down the memory lane. The taste of this cookie is one of them for me – it reminds me of the ever mandatory afternoon tea sessions of my childhood. My mother would always make some cake or cookie – or something experimental (!) – and we would eat that with our tea. Today she still does it for her and for my father, though she should not be anymore – they are not the healthiest things to eat, not everyday at least.

From time to time, we, the whole family, would get addicted to one thing and one thing only, since we are a bunch of obsessive people. At some point, we were addicted to this cookie, the recipe of which my mother learned from my aunt, her sister. We would eat and eat and eat this again and again, every single. At some point, as any other addiction we had, we stopped eating this cookie since we grew a bit tired of it. Until just a few days ago, I had completely forgotten about it! And today, when I made it, it felt really good to feel that taste after many years.

 

In order to do this cookie, you will have to make the dough yourself. I figured, if one can knead dough, then the opportunities in the world of cooking get extremely wide…

 

Ingredients:

 

(makes about 40 cookies, each 20 gr.)

 

for the cookie:
200 gr walnuts
4 tbsp powder sugar
250 gr butter (softened in room temperature)
1 tsp vanilla (this is not necessary, it just gives some nice smell, so feel free to use it or not)
About 2 cups of all-purpose flour (this is a little tricky part, I will explain it below)

 

to put on top of the cookies:
1/2 cup cinnamon
1 cup powder sugar
—

 

1. Put the walnuts in a blender / food processor and grind them into small pieces. Do not make the pieces too small, it would be nice to feel the texture of walnuts inside the cookies.

 

 

2. In a separate bowl, put powder sugar, vanilla and ground walnuts and just mix them a little bit with a spoon. Then add margarine. The easiest way to add 250 gr. of margarine is to chop it into small cubes and add little by little. For instance, add 6 cubes then start kneading. Then add 6 more pieces and continue kneading. And so on, until you are done with all the margarine and you get a rather muddy and sticky mixture.

 

 

3. Now comes the phase of adding the flour. Do not put all the flour once. Just add it little by little. Being left-handed, I knead dough with my left hand and then take a handful of flour with my clean right hand from the package and pour it on the mixture. In this way, it is easier to get the right texture and also it is easier to knead the whole thing. The kind of dough you should have in the end is not a too muddy and soft one – you will feel that it gets dry as you add flour. But try not to add too much flour as well, otherwise it would not stick enough to make nice balls of cookies. In the end, this recipe would take maximum 2 normal drinking glasses of flour.

 

4. When you are done with the dough, put a damp cloth on the bowl and leave it for about 15 minutes. This is important: whenever you knead dough, leave it to rest for a while, at least 15 minutes or in some cases even more. Believe me, it creates a big difference. After 15 minutes (or more, if you have time) take the dough out of the bowl.

 

 

5. Take little pieces from the dough and make little balls. I tried to make them as even as possible but just do however you feel like. However, the size would rather be small – like a little Ikea meatball! Put each of the balls on the tray with baking sheet on. Since there isn’t any baking powder in the dough, they will not get bigger when you bake them therefore you can put the balls as close to each other as you like. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 200C. When the oven is warm enough, put the tray inside the oven, in the middle section.

 

 

6. Bake the cookies until they get a little brownish, for about 20-25 minutes. Then take them out of the oven. In a separate bowl, put cinnamon and powder sugar and mix them with a regular spoon. Now, if you want to feel the taste of cinnamon more, reverse the measurements of cinnamon and powdered sugar. It’s up to you.

 

7. Take each cookie when it is still hot (unfortunately it burns your fingers a little bit!) and then dip it in the cinnamon-powder sugar mixture until it is fully covered with it. You will see that each cookie will get quite a lot of mixture. Cover all the cookies one by one.

 

 

That’s it! Then make some tea – please black tea, no apple tea or herbal tea or whatever kind of aromatic tea – and eat this with your loved ones. We ate a few of those with my roommate and it was again a nice little time that we spent together, chatting. She even said that I am a very nice roommate since I bake all these beautiful things and then make her eat them!