Crispy Walnut Puddles

Stop whatever you are doing right now.  There are more important things to do in life, like making these cookies.  I swear you will forget all about the work you are doing or the important New York Times article or random Wikipedia entry you were reading once you eat just one of these cookies.  I know the world disappeared for a few minutes when I first tried them. 

These cookies are an accidental creation, and I’m so glad they exploded and oozed into my life.  You see, I was busy making two nut rolls, and I decided that I wanted to use a nut paste as the filling.  I ground the nuts, sugar, cinnamon, and butter together until the mixture was nice and pasty.  I rolled the yeast dough out that I had so tenderly created and thickly smeared on the filling.  It was only then that I thought about the ooze and explosion factor.

Fillings that have runny components, like butter and oils, have a tendency to run all over the place when they are baked, and rolled items have a tendency to explode at the middle.  I thought my filling would give me issues, but since I had already smeared it on, I plowed ahead.  There was about a ⅓-cup of filling left, so I put it in a bowl in the fridge with the idea to spread it on toast.  For one of the rolls, I cut decorative slits on the outer curve so the roll wouldn’t explode in the middle.  For the second roll, I left it uncut to just see what would happen.  I crossed my fingers and put the rolls in the oven.  

After 10-15 minutes, I checked on the rolls and sure enough, the filling was oozing out and starting to turn a nice brown color.  I didn’t want the overflow to burn, so I pulled the pans out, quickly transferred the filling to a plate, and popped the rolls back in the oven.  Naturally, I had to try the baked filling.  It just wouldn’t be baking if I didn’t sample everything that came out of the oven.  Let me tell you, the baking filling overflow was awesome.  So awesome that I ate it all at once.  At once.  And yes, I am SO GLAD that you did not see me stuff my face.  It was both ungraceful and completely fulfilling.

After my little moment of crispy filling gluttony, I got out the leftover ⅓-cup of filling and plopped it on cookie trays to bake after the rolls were done.  I suppose it should have occurred to me earlier to just bake the nut filling without the bread.  As a kid, I always ate the sugary pecans off the tops of the nut rolls my grandfather would make and left the bread for the grownups.  Now I can definitely eat the best part of any nut roll without leaving the bread behind.

By the way, in case you are wondering what happened to the nut rolls, luckily, they turned out quite nicely, despite being a bit deflated due to the filling loss.  I’ll share the recipe for them once I have perfected it.  Until then, you’ll have to be content with crispy walnut puddles. 

Notes:
These are super delicate once they are cooled.  They will definitely crumble if you try to transport them and are not gentle.  When I store them, I pack them in-between layers of wax paper to offer them some stability.  They are excellent when crumbled on top of ice cream or plain oatmeal.  Yes, I crumbled a cookie on top of my oatmeal.  Its almost the same as adding nuts and sugar, but twice as good.  This recipe will give you lots and lots of cookies.  If you want to only make a few, I imagine that you could proportionally cut down the ingredients, but I haven’t tried doing that myself.   

Ingredients:
3 cups walnuts
1¼ cups packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

Yields:  Several dozen.  Emphasis on the several. 

Grind, Chill, Scoop, Bake:
Place the walnuts, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter in a food processor, and process until the mixture has formed a paste.  Scrape the mixture into a bowl and chill for a 30-60 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Line 2-4 baking sheets with parchment paper.  Scoop out a teaspoon of the mixture, and place it on the prepared baking sheet.  Repeat with the remaining dough, leaving 2-3 inches between each ball because the dough will spread considerably.  Bake the cookies at 350°F for 7-10 minutes, until the cookies are a nice golden brown color, rotating halfway through.  Once browned, immediately remove the cookies from the oven, and slide the parchment paper off the cookie sheet to cool on a rack.  Once the cookies are fully cooled, place them on a paper towel to absorb any excess oil.  Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature. Pin It