Kuro Goma Cookies

Kuro goma is Japanese for black sesame.  Here in the US the plain white variety is more familiar, made famous in part by the Big Mac jingle...."blah blah, special sauce on a sesame seed bun!"  This wikipedia article will tell you more than you could ever imagine about sesame seeds.  Betcha you had no idea what the actual plant looked like or that Myanmar was the world's largest exporter.  Japan is the largest importer.

Wait, what am I doing learning all this?  It's summer, and all you and I really need to know is that they taste amazing.  Even (or is it especially?) in cookies.

Not so sure?  Make this recipe--NOW!

It starts out with all the usual suspects.

But then these interlopers are added...

...creating a ridiculously addicting dough, which if you don't eat it all straight from the bowl will produce golden and delicious cookies.

The original recipe from Joy the Baker says to chill the dough for 45 minutes and then roll it into balls by hand and coat with additional black sesame seeds.  This was a messy and time consuming process, and I was afraid the cookies were going to have way too much sesame on the outside.

My fears were unfounded.  Maybe there is no such thing as too much sesame.  But the second (yes, second) time I made this recipe skipped the chilling and sprinkled extra seeds on top of the cookies I scooped using a cookie dropper, which resulted in the beauties below.

I took these to a potluck, where they were deemed an ideal combination between a cookie and a bagel.  But apparently everyone was on Atkins, since there were a bunch left at the end of the night.  Too bad for them, and too bad for my waistline as I have no problem consuming several at one time and repeating throughout the day.