Bennecake Butter Cookies

Don't hate me because I'm not beautiful.

Time: 10 minutes to make, 20 to bake

If you enjoy the lush simplicity of a fine peanut butter cookie, you'll do a 360 spin over these. Yes, they, too, have a humbly homemade appearance. They, too, offer an immoderately rich, simple satisfaction. They, too, are crisp and buttery, and get pleasantly stuck in your teeth. But bennecake butter cookies grab your attention by virtue of their delicacy, by what they hold back. They're a bit like a plain girl with a gorgeous smile: you want another smile; you long to make her smile; you think about the smile. They're like that.

Bennecake butter cookies are also lighter than peanut butter cookies. And this makes sense, because bennecake is a flour, not a paste. Thus their crumb isn't overly burdened with fat. Like the Middle Eastern confection, halvah, the flavor of these cookies trips over itself again and again: am I this? am I that? am I this? am I that? Hypnotic.

One final metaphor: if a peanut butter cookie is an orthopedic sandal, a bennecake butter cookies is an elegant slide. You'll want more than one pair of these.

Equipment Mise en Place
For this recipe you will need a digital scale, a mixing bowl, a whisk, a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, a glass measuring cup, a rubber spatula, 2 heavy baking sheets lined with parchment paper, wooden skewers or toothpicks to decorate the cookies, a metal spatula, and a wire cooling rack.

Ingredients
5 ounces unsalted European-style butter, softened
4 ounces (½ cup packed) light brown sugar
5 ounces (about 1 heaping cup) Anson Mills Fine Cloth Bolted Pastry Flour, or an equal amount by weight of unbleached, all-purpose flour
2.5 ounces Anson Mills Bennecake Flour
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 scant tablespoon milk

Directions
1. Beat the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl. With the mixer running on medium-low speed, add the sugar, then increase the speed to medium-high and beat until the mixture is light and aerated, about 3 minutes, scraping down the bowl once or twice. Meanwhile, turn the flour, bennecake flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium mixing bowl and whisk to combine. Crack the egg into a glass measuring cup. Add the vanilla and milk, and beat lightly with a fork until combined.

2. With the mixer running on low speed, add the beaten egg mixture 2 tablespoons at a time, beating between additions, and scraping down the bowl once or twice. With the mixer continuing to run on low speed, stir in the dry ingredients and mix until they are incorporated completely. Detach the bowl from the mixer and scrape it down. The dough will be quite soft. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

3. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper.

4. Using a digital scale weigh out 22 .8-ounce bits of dough one at a time, roll each bit lightly between your palms into a ball, and arrange them on 2 sheet pans. (If you do not have a scale, pull off and roll bits of dough to form 22 evenly sized balls slightly smaller than a golf ball.) Flatten them slightly with moistened palms and press decorative prints onto the surface with a fork and wooden skewer or toothpick. Bake 1 sheet of cookies at a time, until light brown on the tops and deep golden on the bottoms, about 15 minutes, rotating the pan from front to back halfway through. Slide the parchment sheet onto a cooling rack and cool 15 minutes. Bake the remaining tray.

Makes 22 3 ½-inch cookies

What You Need to Know about Benne

Benne was an essential medicinal and kitchen garden plant during our colonial and Antebellum Eras. All great Carolina kitchen gardens contained them, in particular the forbidden subsistence gardens of African slaves who brought benne to Carolina and introduced it to the region's nascent rice culture and cuisine. Planted between field peas, corn, and other human food crops in late spring—and harvested in late summer—benne provided near magical enhancements by improving soil quality and protecting nearby plants from harmful pests. In those days, benne was grown specifically for its extraordinary oil, its vital nutrients, and its culinary versatility.

When rice plantations transitioned their kitchen benne to commodity fields for commodity oil production, benne became sesame. As sesame, benne did not escape heavy pressure for yield, and Southern growers drifted away from an interest in the seeds' culinary diversity, focusing instead on oil production exclusively. In time, raw benne seeds became nearly flavorless, and they were only slightly more interesting when toasted. In fact, modern American sesame bears no resemblance to Antebellum benne.

Much of benne's unique flavor profile and nearly all of the extraordinary derivative foods associated with the seeds have been lost. Here are some examples: Benne leaves were cooked as soup greens and, if pounded prior to adding, worked as a thickener. Benne seeds, raw or toasted, were tossed into stock or water, their oil adding enrichment. (The flavor impact in this application was thought to be extraordinary, by the way.) A handful of benne seeds were simmered in water, and then the water poured into a pot with dry rice. The cooked rice possessed exceptional flavor—served with benne greens it was nearly perfect food. After the oil and water was poured off, the remaining seeds were dried and pounded in a mortar. This resulting flour was called bennecake. There were "benne cakes," benne bread, and benne biscuits?all made with bennecake (the term bennecake by definition meant flour made from benne seeds after oil extraction). Bennecake flour is powerful, reminiscent of toasted peanuts, but intertwined with a wildflower tang, and a sensation of verdancy and vigor (PDF version).