The lace pattern of these cookies is created by the bubbling of the very thin, caramel-based batter. When the cookies are removed from the oven, the bubbles collapse, creating the lace between them. When summer comes around, I intend to use the same technique to make honey lace cookies sandwiching homemade sour cherry jam.

Lace cookies are so delicious and yet so simple that they ended up being among the first cookies my 11-year-old brother ever made all by himself. A few days after I made the cookies which appear above, I had to talk him through baking a batch of his own. He had taken one of my cookies into school and broken it into small pieces to share with his friends, and he came home insisting that he needed more.

A small horde of 6th grade boys approved of these cookies, and I hope that the rest of you will enjoy them, too.

Chocolate Maple Lace Cookies

1/2 C unsalted butter
1/2 C Grade B or Grade A Dark Amber maple syrup
1/2 C brown sugar
1/2 C all purpose flour
1/4 tsp coarse sea salt
Chocolate

Preheat the oven to 375°. Melt the butter, sugar, and maple syrup together in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Remove from heat once the butter is completely melted, and whisk in the flour and salt.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Drop about 1/2 tsp of batter per cookie, taking care to keep them several inches apart. They tend to melt and spread enormously. Bake for about 6 minutes, or until they’re sufficiently caramelized for your tastes. After they’re removed from the oven, wait a few minutes for them to solidify before transfering them from the baking sheet onto a wire rack to continue cooling. If you try to remove them too soon, you will simply end up with a spatula coated with goo.*

Once the cookies are cooled, lay out half of them on a baking sheet. Drop about 1 tsp of molten semisweet chocolate on each of those, and sandwich each with another cookie.

* If you remove them after they have ceased to be goo but before they have hardened completely, you can wrap the still-flexible cookies around a cannoli mold or the narrow neck of a wine bottle to create maple lace cannoli shells, which can then be filled with the cream of your choice.

Posted by Danielle in Chocolate, Cookies, Maple, Sweets on March 5th, 2006 | 5 Comments » | Permalink