Month: April 2025

Cookies

• Large handful (20 g) fresh mint leaves
• 1½ cups (320 g) white sugar
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup (227 g) sour cream
• 1 Tablespoon bourbon
• 2¾ cups (330 g) all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt

Frosting

• ¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter
• Small handful (10-15 g) fresh mint – stems are OK
• 3 cups (342 g) powdered sugar
• 3 Tablespoons bourbon

Cookies:

Combine the large handful of mint and the white sugar in your blender and grind together. In a mixer, cream the minty sugar and the butter together. Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Mix in the sour cream and 1 Tablespoon of bourbon.

Add the dry ingredients, a little at a time, at low speed to avoid poofing yourself with flour.

Chill the cookie dough for at least one hour. Preheat your oven to 425°F.

Scoop 1- to 2-teaspoon blobs of dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat about 2 inches apart. Tell the blobs how pretty they are; they might feel insecure. (Not for nothin’, but this is some of the most delicious unbaked cookie dough you are likely to run across anywhere legal.)

Bake one sheet at a time for about 8 minutes, then swap out for a new tray. Let each batch of cookies cool on the baking sheet. If you run out of baking sheets, gently pull the parchment paper or silicone mat from the baking sheet, then blob out the next batch of cookie dough.

When the cookies have cooled, remove them to a large plate or baking sheet, then frost them.

Frosting:

Melt the remaining 1½ sticks of butter in a small saucepan. Stir in the rest of the fresh mint, and spread it out so that it makes as much contact as possible with the melted butter. Remove the pan from heat, and set it aside for 30 to 45 minutes. Go work on a crossword puzzle.

While you are out of the room, the mint will be infusing into the butter. Fats and alcohol both do a really good job of stripping flavor compounds from herbs and spices. In this case, the butter is taking on the flavors of fresh mint — not a candy caney minty flavor but the taste of actual fresh mint. After the mint and the melted butter have had an opportunity to really get to know each other, strain the butter into the bowl of your mixer and add the powdered sugar and bourbon to it. Starting on the mixer’s slowest speed, beat the frosting ingredients together faster and faster, until they are fluffy.

If the frosting seems a little too soft, refrigerate it for 10 to 15 minutes.

Use a small spatula or the back of a spoon to frost the cookies. If you are taking them somewhere — a Kentucky Derby party — let the frosting firm up for about half an hour before loading them in a single layer in a pizza box. Otherwise eat them with an actual mint julep and wonder what the poor people are doing this afternoon.

By themselves, these cookies are nice but surprisingly standoffish — gently minty, with a very faint background flavor of bourbon. The frosting, on the other hand, is very in-your-face and emphatic and pairs beautifully with its more subtle partner.

Featured photo: Mint Julep Cookies. Photo by John Fladd.

One of the internet’s favorite ways to chocolate

One of the hottest food trends right now is Dubai-style chocolate. Originating in Dubai in 2021, it consists of high-end dark chocolate, pistachio paste or cream, kadayif (shredded crispy filo dough) and tahini (sesame puree). Some over-the-top brands include gold leaf.

Jaime Metzger is the manager of Granite State Candy Shoppe’s Manchester store. She first became aware of Dubai chocolate in 2024.

“I think it started to become a big trend on TikTok or YouTube or both last summer,” she said. “It started to pop up all over the place and it became a craze. It became a trend like all these new things and people were asking for it. Then it kind of fizzled like trends do, and we thought it was over, but then it came back again.”

Because of the cost of ingredients and uncertainty over how long there would be demand for it, many chocolate manufacturers have been slow to adopt Dubai chocolate, Metzger said. “Actually, for the Made in New Hampshire Expo,” she said, “we made Dubai berries. They were cut strawberries with a pistachio filling, chocolate and [kadayif], the shredded filo sprinkled on top. It was a huge hit. [Our chocolatiers] are in the process of working on a Dubai bar. They just want to do experiments to find out its shelf life, how long it’s going to last.”

One of the complications of producing a Dubai chocolate bar stems from very particular labeling regulations, Metzger said.

“Traditionally,” she explained, “the filling has tahini in it. But apparently anything with sesame paste has to have a very specific label … saying what it contains.” The usual labels apparently won’t meet the regulatory requirements, she said.

Trina Bird is the head baker at Lighthouse Local in Bedford. She agrees that Dubai chocolate has come on the scene fairly recently.

“To be honest,” Bird said, “it’s been kind of a specialty thing until recently, when people started picking up on it.”

Bird said figuring out Lighthouse Local’s pistachio filling was the longest part of working up a house recipe for a Dubai chocolate candy.

“A lot of people use pistachio cream,” she explained, “but there’s also pistachio paste, which is all-natural, literally just pistachios, salt and a bit of oil. Pistachio cream typically has sugar in it or white chocolate, which gives it a sweet creaminess. At first I was trying to make it with just the pistachio paste because I didn’t want to buy the cream, which is full of ingredients I don’t like. But then what I figured out is I can buy the paste, which is very expensive but it’s all natural, and then our chocolatier can whip me up some white chocolate and I will drizzle that in as I build an emulsion, and that gives it what people want they want, that sweet spreadability, and then I mix it with the kadayif.”

Bird said that while pistachios get the lion’s share of the attention in a Dubai chocolate, the real hero is the kadayif, which gives it some needed texture.

“The filo has a really crunchy texture,” she said, “with really tiny, crunched up little pieces. You can buy it like that already done, which is expensive, or you can buy it frozen in big long strands, and then when it comes, we have to toast it on the stove and chop it up, and then it takes a little bit longer, but it’s also much cheaper.”

Aside from the actual Dubai chocolate itself, Bird said the combination of chocolate, pistachio, and tahini lends itself to many Dubai-inspired baked goods. “We made a Dubai chocolate doughnut, and people loved it. So we’ll make Dubai cake pops, scones, anything you can put pistachios and crunchy bits in.”

Featured photo: Dubai chocolate at Lighthouse Local in Bedford. Photo by John Fladd.

News from the local food scene

• Food trucks and more: First Friday Concord returns on Friday, May 2, from 4 to 8 p.m. In addition to shopportunities, the evenings feature food trucks, community activities and more. On May 2 Concord Arts Market (concordartsmarket.org) will be on the scene along with food trucks Wicked Tasty and The Gravy Train, and The Wandering Souls are slated to play in Bicentennial Square, according to firstfridayconcord.com. The event is put on by Intown Concord, intownconcord.org.

• Farmers market: Concord Farmers Market also opens for the season on Saturday, May 3, and runs Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to noon, through Oct. 25. See concordfarmersmarket.com for vendors and more information.

• Derby food: And they’re off! The 151st Kentucky Derby will take place on Saturday, May 3, in Louisville, Kentucky. Some area businesses have celebrations planned for the event. Peddler’s Daughter (48 Main St., Nashua, 821-7535, thepeddlersdaughter.com) will host its annual Kentucky Derby Party from 3 to 7 p.m.; bold ties and large hats are encouraged. Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, 206-3888, chunkys.com) will hold a Kentucky Derby Dinner Party beginning at 4 p.m.; tickets are $30 through the Chuncky’s website.

• Cinco de Mayo: Zorvino Vineyards (226 Main St., Sandown, 887-8463, zorvino.com) will host an Uno de Mayo Margarita Dinner on Thursday, May 1, with each course paired with a different margarita, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $80 at eventbrite.com. Flag Hill Winery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) will host a May-Garitas celebration Sunday, May 4, from noon to 3 p.m. This is a mid-afternoon luncheon, complete with a photo booth, special arrival favors, fresh made guacamole and salsa, and a May-garita flight. Tickets are $60 and are also available at eventbrite.com. Margaritas Mexican Restaurants (1037 Elm St., Manchester, 647-7717, and 1 Nashua Drive, Nashua, 883-0996, margs.com) will celebrate Five Days of Cinco de Mayo from Thursday, May 1, through Monday, May 5. Visit Margarita’s website for particulars.