Yeasted Cookies - Pistachio and Sesame Semolina

You'll dive for these cookies! If you've eaten a barazek, you know I'm not wrong about it. Sweets from the Mediterranean region  are amazingly crazy delicious. The well-known baklava is second to a barazek, patiently hand-crafted from a blend of semolina, flour, pistachio and sesame seeds flavoured with orange blossom water.  Interestingly, the combination of yeast with baking powder in pastry making is found in this cookie. By the way, this cookie isn't for new-hands baker. The coating of the pitachio and sticky sesame seeds of this cookie isn't a play play thing of baking chocolate chips cookies. My both hands were in a big mess of sticky sesame seeds and had to use my two elbows to lift up baking sheet from one location to another. 

I decided to change the recipe to make my life easier after shaping 20 pieces of barazek in my first batch, and so this one in picture isn't a barazek but taste as good as one , or if not better with a teaspoon of rum and some of my favourite spices added to the dough...totally violating the original.

Recipe:
Ingredients

80g very soft ghee or butter

20g extra virgin olive oil
100g white sugar

1 medium size egg

¼ tsp vanilla                                                  

¼ tsp orange blossom water

2 drops rose flavor

1 tsp rum

150g fine plain flour
150g semolina flour

¼ tsp cardamom powder

1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp instant yeast

½ tsp salt

50g crushed raw pistachios

100g untoasted white sesame seeds

30g honey

Method

·      Cream Ghee, oil  and sugar till well blend.

·      Add in egg and continue blending with wooden spoon till smooth.

·      Flavour it with orange blossom water, vanilla and rose flavor / essence

·      Add in semolina, flour , cardamom powder, nutmeg, baking powder, yeast and salt.

·      Add in crushed pitachio last.

·      Use hands to mix till a very soft dough is formed.  The dough will get less soft after an hour rest.

·      Place sesame seeds and honey in bowl  and warm it in microwave oven for 30 seconds for easier mixing

·      Use melon baller to scoop dough into small balls.

·      Place some sticky sesame seeds at center of palm.

·      Take a small dough and press hard on the sesame seeds, then slide the flatten dough inwards and lift it up . Place it on baking sheet. Press the cookie again .

·      Bake in preheated oven at 160 degrees in five minutes, 130 degrees till light golden. Turn off oven and dry them till deeper golden . This will also make cookies crunchier.

·      Store in airtight container after cool.