Ever since I saw Little Fat Boy’s indulgent stress baked cookies… I too have dreamed in nutty sesame and bittersweet chocolate. Between that and pre-pandemic regular visits to Big Softee during work trips where I could get salted egg custard ice cream with puffed rice and sesame (I highly advocate anyone who can go do…I am so obsessed with that place it’s not even funny)…I just gotta have a sesame fix.

So I need to update this with photos once able, but since I’ve now made this a handful of times in the past week with largely positive feedback from my cookie taste testers (thanks local “fam” and roommates!). I figure delaying this post just because it’s not photo forward is a disservice to those who enjoy fun flavors and what I like to consider the peace treaty between crunchy and soft cookie lovers. The sesame sugar glass makes for a crunchy section in your otherwise fairly soft cookie. (AKA will be updated with next batch of cookies since all we have here are phone photos of the sugar glass.)

Sesame “crunchems”

While I don’t consider this to be a hard cookie to make…I do recommend a food thermometer if you want proper “crunchem” texture from making sugar glass at hard crack stage (that is indeed the technical term). This recipe is in a rare imperial volumetric as the iteration I liked the most came when the food scale was out of service.

Ingredients
~12 large cookies

For the “crunchems”

  • 1/4 cup sesame seeds (white or black)
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • Food thermometer
  • Greased metal pan or ungreased silicone mat

For the cookie itself

  • 1 stick of unsalted butter, browned
  • 1 cup white or light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda
  • 3/4 tsp baking powder
  • 4 oz chocolate chunks (I used semisweet, do what you want!)
Final dough pre-mixed together.
  1. In a small pot on medium heat melt white sugar, stir constantly to prevent burning. Once it starts to liquify and turn light to medium brown (aka not dark brown that borders burning), lower heat and keep stirring until thermometer reads between 300-310 F.
  2. Remove from heat and stir in sesame seeds, add more if you want extra sesame flavor/texture.
  3. Pour mixture onto prepared surface and spread liquid to a thin sheet (the thicker the mix on the pan/sheet the harder it will be to shatter). Let cool.
  4. Once cooled, shatter to desired size, I aim for nickel or 1 cm in rough diameter chunks. If it’s thin enough you can just lift the cooled mass (now one sesame covered sheer of sugar glass!) and bang on the surface to break into the desired size. I keep the leftovers as a “nutty” sugar snack.
  5. Brown butter, cool to room temperature (we don’t need this solidified to work our magic but if you’ve made ahead of time that’s fine too).
  6. Cream sugar and butter.
  7. Mix in sesame oil and vanilla.
  8. Add egg and mix until fully incorporated.
  9. In a separate bowl, sift flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together.
  10. In batches, mix dry ingredients into wet bowl.
  11. Add in the chocolate and sesame inclusions.
  12. Cover and chill for 30 minutes. While chilling line baking sheets with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350 F.
  13. If making large cookies, space 2″ or about 5 cm apart as these will spread! Bake for 9-12 minutes.
  14. Let cool and enjoy!

Notes:
-If you don’t have a food thermometer, no worries, just have a cold glass of water nearby and a spoon to grab a bit of sugar. Drop the sugar into the water and if it makes wispy tails as the ball solidifies, you’ve done it!
-If you don’t want to make sugar glass, your texture will suffer but skip steps 1-4 and add the sesame seeds directly in step 11.
-Can use regular unsalted butter if you do not wish to brown butter, I just feel it adds extra indulgence for a the little extra time put into browning it.
-Can chill overnight or keep in fridge for up to two days if you want to prep dough ahead of time.
-Since dough is chilled butter does not have to be in a solid state to mix, we chill the dough to allow for good texture and prevents cookie from having the butter seep out in the bake.
-Dough will be dry and clumpy, don’t worry, it’ll still be soft, tender, and have crunchy bits if you follow the recipe as is

Stay Hungry
XOXO
Mish