Ghoriba Bahla Recipe | Moroccan "Silly" Shortbread Cookies for #ProgressiveEats
This ghoriba bahla recipe is just sweet enough, super crunchy and crumbly and studded with ground fried almonds and toasted sesame seeds. I dare you to eat just one! Please use a scale to measure out your ingredients.
For Frying almonds: about 1/2 cup of neutral vegetable oil
125gramsgranulated sugar
1Tablespoonvanilla sugar or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
125gramsunsalted buttersoftened
97gramsneutral vegetable oil
28gramssesame oil(not toasted) or, for a lighter sesame flavor, use a total of 125 grams neutral oil
¼teaspoonkosher salt
500gramsapproximately--I used 450 grams all-purpose flour
1 ½teaspoonsbaking powder
Instructions
Set a rack in the top third of the oven and preheat to 400F.
Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment and set aside.
Put the sesame seeds in a dry skillet and heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally and then constantly as the sesame seeds begin to take on a bit of color. Toast the sesame seeds to a light golden brown. Spread out on a paper towel to cool.
Wipe out the skillet in case any sesame seeds are stuck to the bottom (just to be safe) and fill with about 1/4" vegetable oil. Allow the oil to get hot. Test by dropping in a piece of slivered almond. It should begin to gently bubble in 1-2 seconds.
Add the rest of the almonds and fry, stirring constantly, until a very pale golden color. The nuts will continue to take on color for an additional couple of minutes, so be sure to remove them from the oil before you think they're ready.
Pour the nuts into a strainer set over a heat-safe bowl and then spread them out to cool completely.
Coarsely grind the nuts in a small food processor or mini chopper. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the granulated sugar, vanilla sugar (or extra granulated sugar plus 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract), butter, oils, and salt.
Beat until reasonably well combined (it may look a bit lumpy. That's okay).
Mix in the sesame seeds and ground almonds.
Whisk together about half the flour and baking powder, and then add that to the mixer. Mix on low speed until you have a sticky dough.
Add enough of the remaining flour to make a stiff, crumbly dough that holds together when you squeeze it. I ended up using 450 grams of the total of 500 grams of flour. You may need a bit more or less depending on your flour and the humidity.
Once the dough is the right consistency (and even if it doesn't crack, it will be delicious, so don't get upset), weigh it and divide the weight by 40. I ended up needed 22 3/4 grams of dough per cookie, so some I scaled at 22 grams and some at 23 grams and it all worked out just fine.
Form each piece of dough into a fairly smooth ball (you won't be able to roll it, because it will crumble, so just form it with your hands). Flatten each ball of dough between your palms so the edges are thinner than the centers. Try to make them as round as you can, but it's not the end of the world if they're lopsided.
Place each shaped cookie on the prepared sheets--20 per sheet.
Bake one tray at a time for 7 minutes. Then rotate the pan 180 degrees, reduce the heat to 375F and bake an additional 3-6 minutes (depending on your oven) until very pale golden around the edges. With all the seed and nut oils, they'll take on color quickly, so keep an eye on them.
Remove the sheet from the oven and carefully transfer to a cooling rack. The cookies will be soft, but they will crisp and crunch up as they cool. By the time they are completely cool, they'll be perfect!
Bake the second sheet (remember to turn the oven back up to 400 first). The second batch might take slightly less time to bake than the first batch. Mine did.
Try not to eat all of them. Enjoy!
Notes
TECHNIQUES
The recipe is very slightly adapted from this Moroccan shortbread recipe on The Spruce. The only changes I made were to up the salt a smidge (shocking) and to use some sesame oil for a portion of the oil called for in the recipe.That’s a totally optional step, but if you really love the flavor of sesame, you’ll want to give it a shot.
TECHNIQUES FOR MAKING MOROCCAN COOKIES
In making these ghoriba, there were a couple of new-to-me techniques I thought I’d share with you really quickly.
The first is blanching and frying almonds. To be honest, I bought slivered blanched almonds, so all I had to do was fry them. Easy enough, but make sure you remove the nuts from the oil before you think they’re done, because they will continue to darken, even once removed, until the oil on their surface cools down enough to stop cooking them. Take it from me, because I learned the hard way.
The second technique is all about the mixing and shaping of the dough.The dough is very crumbly and seems too dry since it doesn’t clump together unless you squeeze it, but it’s that texture that encourages the cracks on top.Once you have enough flour incorporated in the dough to give you that dry-ish texture, you mix it with the paddle attachment for a good ten minutes. I’m guessing that this helps to develop some gluten, which is limited since the oil pretty much coats most of the flour.The only water available to activate gluten is what’s in the butter, so my guess is that the extended beating of the dough lends the dough strength.‘m telling you guys, ghoriba bahla are very sandy, crumbly cookies, and I want to eat them all the time. They’re even crumblier than the Scottish shortbread I’m used to eating. It is seriously good stuff, and I want to dunk these guys into coffee or tea or just shove them in my face, one after the other.
Note how dry the dough looks. I promise your cookies will turn out beautifully crumbly and sandy and addictive, even if you think they won’t!
HOW TO SHAPE YOUR GHORIBA
As to the shaping of the cookies, you:
form/press them into balls (you can’t really roll them or they crumble)
flatten them between your palms so the edges are thinner than the middles.
Traditionally, there’s a special pan you are supposed to bake them on so they end up with concave backs.I think that might also encourage even more cracking, but shaping them by hand and baking them on plain old parchment-lined sheets works just fine.