Gosh, I made the garam masala cookies and zaatar cookies on-the-fly, and I can't quite remember what went into them.
But the basic recipe was the same as the sweet cookies, except with half the amount of sugar.
For the Garam Masala cookies, I started by adding some berbere spice mix with the flour, then continued mixing and adding berbere until the dough had a strong chili aftertaste. I probably added around two tablespoons berbere total. At this point the dough did not have much initial taste, so I added some ras el hanout bit by bit, stirring in between doses as with the berbere. I think I added around one tablespoon of ras el hanout. The dough gained a dull initial taste that needed a little more bite, so I added cinnamon (again, about 1 tablespoon) until the dough was to my satisfaction.
For the zataar cookies, again, my memory is a little sketchy. I started by adding a couple of tablespoons of zataar with the flour, then I added a couple of teaspoons of light-colored opaque honey, and I finished off with a few teaspoons of ground mace.
For those wondering about Berbere, an Ethiopian Chilli Spice Mix, the wonderful Ras-al-Hanout from Morocco or Zatar, please see the links below:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Ethiopian-Spice-Mix-Berbere-104015
http://moroccanfood.about.com/od/maindishes/r/ras_el_hanout_recipe.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Za%27atar
And it ended that that spicy blend tasted a lot like the mix of spices in Indian Garam Masala...so that's how the shortbread got their name...not to mention that "Garam Masala" just means Hot Spices, so it's perfectly accurate.
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