Italian Sesame Seed Cookies

August and the back-to-school preparations are someone else's concern and I am in the garden, harvesting tomatoes, making sauce, freezing jars for winter. The tomatoes this year are abundant — more than I can eat, more than I can give away, more than the neighbors need — and the abundance is a problem I love, the problem of too much, the problem that requires twelve jars of sauce and the satisfaction of lining them up in the freezer and knowing that February will have July in it, that the winter will have the garden in it, that the preservation is the defiance, the refusal to let the season end without capturing it in a jar.

I drove to Cedarhurst with a jar of the sauce on Wednesday — freshly made, still warm, with the tomatoes from my garden and the basil from my pot and the garlic from the farm stand. The staff heated it and put it on pasta for Marvin's lunch. He ate a full plate. He ate the tomatoes I grew. He ate the garden I planted. He ate the sun and the water and the dirt and the talking I do to the tomatoes when nobody is watching, and the eating was the receiving, and the receiving was the chain, and the chain connected a seed in the dirt in April to a plate of pasta in Cedarhurst in August, and the connection is the miracle, the small, daily, vegetable miracle that is my life.

After a day at the stove — stirring and tasting and ladling sauce into jars — I don’t want to stop being in the kitchen. I want to keep my hands busy, keep the warmth going, keep the thread of the day from snapping. So I make these cookies. They’re the cookies my mother’s neighbor used to bring wrapped in wax paper, the ones that taste like something old and patient and Italian, and they feel right at the end of a day that was itself about patience — seeds to tomatoes to sauce to a plate of pasta in Cedarhurst. The sesame seeds toast as they bake, and the whole kitchen smells like something worth remembering.

Prep Time: 25 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into small cubes
2 large eggs
1/3 cup whole milk, plus more for dipping
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
1 1/2 cups sesame seeds

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Combine dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt until evenly blended.
Cut in the butter. Add the cold butter cubes to the flour mixture. Using your fingertips or a pastry cutter, work the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with pea-sized pieces of butter throughout.
Add the wet ingredients. In a small bowl, lightly beat the eggs with the milk, vanilla extract, and almond extract if using. Pour into the flour mixture and stir just until a soft, slightly sticky dough comes together. Do not overmix.
Shape the cookies. Break off small pieces of dough (about 1 tablespoon each) and roll between your palms into logs roughly 2 1/2 inches long and 3/4 inch thick.
Coat in sesame seeds. Pour the sesame seeds into a shallow bowl. Briefly dip each dough log in milk, then roll it in the sesame seeds, pressing gently so the seeds adhere on all sides.
Bake. Arrange the cookies on the prepared baking sheets, spacing them about 1 inch apart. Bake for 18–22 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through, until the cookies are golden and the sesame seeds are lightly toasted. The bottoms should be a warm amber color.
Cool and store. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 10 days — they keep beautifully and actually improve on the second day.

Nutrition (per serving)

Italian Sesame Seed Cookies — The Sweet End of a Garden Day