Black Sesame Cookies

Ingredients

• 120 g unsalted butter (½ cup (8 Tbsp, 1 stick) + ½ Tbsp)
• 1⅓ cups all-purpose flour (plain flour)
• 40 g almond meal (can get from Trader Joe's)
• 6 Tbsp sugar
• ⅛ tsp kosher salt
• ¾ cup light brown sugar
• 5 Tbsp toasted black sesame seeds
• 1 large egg yolk (use only the yolk for the most crumbly, rich, and crisp texture; you can add the whole egg, but the final texture will be different)

Instructions

Making the Dough:

1. Cut 120 g unsalted butter (½ cup + ½ Tbsp) into small cubes. Keep them refrigerated until ready to use
2. In a food processor, combine 1⅓ cups all-purpose flour (plain flour), 40 g almond meal (¼ cup + 4 tsp), 6 Tbsp sugar, and ⅛ tsp kosher salt. If you don’t have a food processor, you can simply use a bowl to mix all the ingredients.
3. If you want a finer texture for your 5 Tbsp toasted black sesame seeds, add them now to the food processor. If you prefer to keep them whole, add them later with the egg yolk.
4. Take out the butter from the refrigerator, add to the food processor, and mix together. If you use a regular bowl to mix, use a dough/pastry blender to combine the butter into the dry ingredients.
5. Lastly, add 1 large egg yolk.
6. If the food processor is small and it doesn’t look like it’s mixed completely, take it out and mix well with a silicone spatula.

Roll and Chilling the Dough:

7. Put the dough on your work surface. Form it into a ball and divide into 2 equal portions.
8. Roll each portion into a log approximately 2 inches (5 cm) in diameter.
9. Wrap the logs tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, for at least 1 hour (you can put them in the freezer to speed up the process as well).

Baking:

10. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). For a convection oven, reduce the cooking temperature by 25ºF (15ºC). Remove the plastic wrap and cut the dough into discs about ¼ inch (6 mm) thick. If you prefer thicker cookies, cut into discs about ½ inch (1.3 cm) for a total of 20 thick cookies.
11. Place them on 2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until lightly browned around the edges. If you are baking in batches, make sure to keep the second batch in the refrigerator to chill until it‘s time to bake.
12. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes. Then, transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Sample Imagery

Good Recipe Sites

• The Floured Table: The layout of it is clean and easy to follow with lots of sample images to help guide viewers through each step of the baking process. Additionally, I think it's helpful that there's a button for viewers to click on to immediately jump to the recipe part. There's also links for viewers to click on to jump to different sections in the overall post (e.g. ingredients, instructions, etc.)
• Cooking Therapy: This site is very similar to the first one in the sense that it's clean and also easy to follow. It contains many of the same elements I mentioned above -- lots of pictures throughout and a button for viewers to jump to the recipe right away. Something else I like about this site is that it includes additional tips to help people make the perfect cookie such as having to be careful about over-mixing, why it's important to rest the dough, etc.
• Just One Cookbook: This is the site I used as a source for the above information. Again, this site has all of the same elements as the other two above. Some extra things that stand out to me is that it introduces viewers to the cultural ties black sesame seeds have to Japan and, in the recipe part, there's buttons to let viewers toggle between customary units and metrics units. There's also buttons for if viewers want to double or triple the original serving size.

Non-Recipe Sites

• Nike: This website has a very sleek, minimalistic design with using white, grey, and black as the main colors. The imagery on the landing page is also very eye-catching and the layout is very symmetrical, which I like.
• Stripe: I love the color gradient thing that's happening on the landing page. The scrolling animations are also really smooth and super well-engineered.
• Canva: Nice use of colors once again. It has a user-friendly interface and makes good use of grids for images.