Garlic-seaweed-cheese cookies

This is actually an improvised version of cheese cookies I`ve made before as I made several changes with the recipe. This time I finally got to use this gorgeous Edam cheese (although I think still not the matured one). I found it at a supermarket that I accidentally found when I was wandering around the city. Oh, I always love finding new (food) stores! 

And this time I also used garlic. As if I still don`t get enough of it everyday. Probably I should rename my blog. A box of garlic. Garlicky kitchen.My love affair with garlic.

Sorry. I`m back.

Grate the cheese and the garlic...

...and mix well. They`ll form a damp lumpy mass because of the water released from the grated garlic.

In a bowl, add butter and egg yolks. 

Now this, I think, is important. If this is your first trial, I suggest you to start with unsalted butter because that way you can control the saltiness easier.

Whenever I used regular salted butter (or margarine), the cookies ended up too salty. And to make thing worse, I sometimes added SALT to the dough because the dough always, always tasted undersalted. And that actually happened also in these cookies I`m showing you now. 

Confession: My cookies are never perfect. That`s the truth.

Now I need to move on with the next step.

I added some extra egg yolks here. 

Beat them up until well blended using a mixer (or your Kitchen Aid..*envy*).

Fold in the cheese and garlic mixture.

Then the flour.
Another note here, I reduced the amount of the flour so now the ratio of butter:flour:cheese is 1 : 1 : 1.

Piping time. I always clip the upper part of the pastry bag to avoid the messiness during the piping. It works all the time for me, who is super duper clumsy.
You can use your favorite nozzle too. I was really excited to know how this whole garlic and changes of ingredient ratio would turn out, I couldn`t care less about giving them pretty looks.

I made them in finger-sized log shape. Very simple, and quick too. One thing you need to do if you go with this shape, though, make sure you make both ends of the log blunted. You can simply give a couple of gentle taps with your finger to any protruding thin sharp ends.  Otherwise, the ends will either get overbrowned or worse, burnt already while the remaining log part are perfectly in golden color.

No, I`m not saying they have to look neat. This is me talking and my cookies always look far from neat. Did I tell you that my cookies are never perfect? And to be fair, not only cookies. Well, I know you knew it well already.

Same with my previous cheese cookies, this time too I was curious how the garlic and cheese would work with seaweed. So I saved a small batch of the dough and folded in a tbs of seaweed. If you are new with the idea of combining cheese and seaweed, just make a small batch of it and go figure if you like it.




And...bake`em, baby. The butter will quickly melt out of the dough creating lots and lots of oil bubbles. I actually thought that this would be another disaster in my kitchen, but the bubbles were quickly gone once I took the tray out from the oven.

Can you imagine how my kitchen smelled when I was baking these?? It was insanely good!

Alright, the cookies are done and now is time for my verdict.

With the modified recipe (more butter, less flour), the cookies came out in a better texture, which is mostly crunchy, definitely not crumbly, yet still leaving some fluffiness. The aroma coming out from the baked cheese, garlic, and seaweed gave the huge drool factor. So, texture is good, smell is great.

The downside is, though, the taste. The saltiness seemed to overpower the cheese richness itself and that was a real shame. Although the cookies smell crazily cheesy, I could barely taste anything but salt there. Sad!

So, pretty please, use unsalted butter. Especially for your first trial. And although if your dough tastes like you need to add salt, try bake some first. From my experience, the cookies will come out saltier than the dough is.  The only reason I could think of is the reduced water content during the baking probably makes the salt more concentrated. 

With that trick, I really really hope your cookies will come out zillion times better than mine!

Ingredients:
150 g edam cheese
4 cloves garlic
150 g butter (preferably unsalted one)
3 egg yolks
150 g flour
1-2 tbs seaweed flakes (aonori)
Bake at 180 C for 20-25 mins (until golden brown)