With a generous dose of fragrant spices—sweet paprika, black pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and nutmeg—these cookies are likely to be like none you have ever experienced.
The flavor of these intensely buttery cookies is definitely exotic. It conjures up scenes of ancient ruins, mysterious nights, and distant moons.
With a generous dose of fragrant spices—sweet paprika, black pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and nutmeg—these cookies are likely to be like none you have ever experienced.
Unless of course you tried my Garam Masala & Candied Ginger Cookies from last year’s Starry Night collection. Those are wonderfully exotic as well.
When eating these cookies, I always think of Scheherazade and the collection of stories known as One Thousand and One Nights. Arabian dancers in flowing silk garments spring to life in my imagination. And since this is my fantasy, I’m one of them.
Then, after all that dancing, I prepare a lovely pot of tea and present these rare and precious cookies to the bad-ass king, who as you know has already killed 1000 women. Only to his cookies, I add a little something extra.
And thus, after the king dies in his sleep later that night, Scheherazade and I grab all the silver we can carry, jump on our Arabian horses (the fastest in the world) and race across the Persian desert, all the way to Paris, where she sets up a renowned story-telling workshop and me an artisan cookie atelier next door. Her stories and my cookies become the talk of Paris, and we both live happily ever after.
P.S. We thought about naming these cookies Moon over Persia Butter Cookies, but Moon over Tunisia has such a better ring to it, don’t you agree? And besides, we raced through Tunisia by moonlight on Christmas Eve before stowing away on a cargo ship bound for France. We gave the horses, a bag of silver, and the rest of the cookies to a couple of mop-haired street urchins.
Jump to Recipe
Here’s the entire LunaCafe Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies: Silver Bells collection. If you bake along, one cookie a day from December 1st to December 12th, you’ll have a wonderful selection of holiday cookies to share with family and friends, with time to spare.
- On the 1st day of Christmas: Chinese Five Spice Butter Cookies
- On the 2nd day of Christmas: Espresso Orange Butter Cookies
- On the 3rd day of Christmas: Chocolate Toasted Coconut Bars
- On the 4th day of Christmas: Ginger Spice Stars
- On the 5th day of Christmas: Cinnamon Hot & Orange Shortbread
- On the 6th day of Christmas: Chocolate & Warm Winter Spice Butter Crisps
- On the 7th day of Christmas: Lemon Gingerbread Caramel Bars
- On the 8th day of Christmas: Moon over Tunisia (Baharat) Butter Cookies
- On the 9th day of Christmas: Peanut Butter Ginger Shortbread
- On the 10th day of Christmas: Toasted Pecan Gems
- On the 11th day of Christmas: Coconut Vanilla Lime Shortbread
- On the 12th day of Christmas: Peppermint Lime Kaleidoscope Cookies
Help! Where has the recipe gone?! I bookmarked this recipe earlier this week so I could bake them this weekend. Now the page still exists, but the recipe for both the baharat mixure and the cookie are gone. I am heartbroken. Was so looking forward to trying these exotic little confections.
Click JUMP TO RECIPE! Running to it now to make sure the jump is active. Thanks!!!
Yes, the jump is working. Click JUMP TO RECIPE at end of intro text. Thanks! 🙂
When I click JUMP TO RECIPE it simply opens the same page in a new tab. I’ve tried about a dozen times. Maybe it’s a browser problem. I’ll try something other than Chrome.
Tried in both IE11 and Edge. Same thing. Just opens the same page in a new tab.
Serena, again, so sorry with the issues with the link. Just corrected it again. Hope it holds this time. If you have trouble agai, simply add 2/ to the end of the URL. Thanks!
I figured it out (with help from friends). Page 2. Duh me! Anyway, thank you for your help. I can’t wait to try this recipe.
Hi there! I simply would like to give you a huge thumbs up for your great
info you have here on this post. I’ll be returning to your website for more
soon.
Hi there! I simply would like to give you a huge thumbs up for your great
info you have here on this post. I’ll be returning to your website for more
soon.
Becauee the admin of this web page is working, no hesitation very shortly it will be famous, ddue to
its quality contents.
Umm no I read all intros, prefaces, etc. I learned early that much can be garnered about what you are reading if you read introductions first. That, and my English teacher in grade school used to quiz us on them 😉
Hello again 😀
This was the other batch of cookies of your lovely recipes that I baked up tonight for our family’s Christmas Eve celebrations tomorrow – well I guess technically today for me ;). I was so enticed by the aromas (and then the flavour of the cookie dough ;)) that I couldn’t wait to get them into the oven… but I did wait, thankfully. So deliciously different and evocative of spice markets (or spice areas of markets) I’ve been to elsewhere in the world (including the-closest-I’ve-ever-been-to-Tunisia’s Egypt). I’m so excited to share these with the more adventurous of my relatives… and then a friend that loves anything Moroccan, and then a coworker that loves these spices… maybe I’ll find a mop-haired urchin on the way, too 😉
Off to dream, all gleefully sugar and spice (and everything nice?) filled. Thanks again! 😀
Hi Phaedra! It must have been you I created this cookie for. So happy you like them. 🙂
Alright Susan, you got to me. I love a baked good with a story! Especially if it inspires a cookie! Or was it the other way around? Whatever! These have my attention! I really like the meat tenderizer treatment. I love to find a new use for a specialty utensil as much as a good made-up story. I also want what inspired this episode of baking! Ho-ho-ho and pass the wine? It was wine, right?
Susan, LOL! You may be the only person who actually read the intro. The cookies themselves were inspired by a love for evocative spice blends, which I always make myself. Looking around the kitchen for Christmas cookie inspiration, I spotted the little jar with marking pen inscription “My Baharat.” The dough balls were cooling in the frig within minutes. For the later tie-in with Scheherazade, it was late one night after 10-12 hours at the day job. I was fading fast, but had to get the post out before closing down the computer. So I started cruising the web, found the Arabian Dancers on YouTube and the post then wrote itself. I reread it a couple of times, thinking “This is nuts” but then also thought, “Oh heck, no one will read it anyway.” 🙂
P.S No wine was involve, only Christmas tea. 🙂
P.S.S. I wonder how hard it would be to create designs for an implement like a meat pounder that could be used as a cookie stamp? I spent so much time working with cookie stamps this year and was mostly disappointed because the impressions are too shallow to create good definition in the baked cookie. The meat pounder works way better.
wow. These are on my must try list. And the spice mix is brilliant! Top of the list for the next baking adventure!
Dana, thanks so much! Wouldn’t these be perfect on the beach at Manzanita with a jug of hot cider? Bundled up in 15 layers of Patagonia clothing of course. 🙂