Back in college, I wanted to do a fun take on cookies and cream, and so I made a panna cotta with chocolate chip shortbreads. The shortbreads themselves were buttery and light, but the chocolate actually had this very enjoyable crunch to it after a batch of them had to sit through the cold Boston winter on my walk back to my dorm room. The chocolate was brittle and crisp and had a similar effect to a straciatella ice cream, adding a nice contrast to the tender, soft shortbread. Texturally, these cookies were a triumph, and something I still remember baking all of these years later. Fun fact, we were borrowing my friend Michael’s dorm kitchen, and we forgot a tray of the cookies in his oven. For about 8 hours. They were completely black and my silpat they were baking on was ruined. Michael himself was the one who sent us a picture of that after the fact. But that aside, the cookies that we did remember and ate were delicious. Flash forward to about 8 years(which is crazy to think that it’s been that long ago but time sure does fly) later, and I wanted to revisit these cookies, but with a fun twist! My dear friend Shari(from season 10 of Masterchef) gifted me with a bag of this gorgeous Indian rock sugar. The sugar itself looks like crystals, and I got the idea to use them to encrust my shortbreads. I tried doing a version of a sugar-rolled cookie a few years ago, but the palm sugar I used was too granular, so the sugar wound up melting and somewhat burning, and the cookies stuck to the parchment. But this time around, I figured, let’s try it with the much larger Indian sugar crystals, and the end result was pretty close to perfect! The sugar itself almost looked like ice crystals coating the edges of the cookie, a perfect nod to my cookies that sat in the abundant natural refrigeration that was Boston in December all those years ago.

Unlike the original version of the shortbread cookie I mentioned, this rendition has a few key differences. While the dough itself is a classic French shortbread recipe, I used a combination of both coarsely chopped dark chocolate and cacao nibs. My friend Ann gifted me with a bunch of cacao nibs(apparently I’ve been getting a lot of cool ingredient gifts this year from friends, not that I am complaining!), and I felt like this was the perfect cookie to use them in. Cacao nibs on their own can be very bitter, since they are basically raw, unsweetened chocolate(think like eating a bar of baking chocolate, but it’s crunchy), and you have, generally speaking, the flavor of a cacao nib. However, since we are rolling these cookies in sugar, that balances out with the cacao perfectly, giving this recipe room for both of those ingredients, and allowing the cookies themselves to neither be too bitter from the addition of the nibs, or too sweet from having the Indian sugar baked around it. With the original shortbreads, I rolled out the dough and cut out rounds. This time around, we are doing something a little different. I call it the “sausage method”, but I am sure there is a professional/more universally-accepted term for this technique. But we are taking the dough, placing it directly onto plastic wrap in a long row, wrapping that in the cling film, and rolling it into a log. Then refrigerating that log until the dough is solid, brushing the exterior with egg white, and rolling that in the Indian sugar to encrust the edges with that gorgeous finish. Then similar to an icebox cookie, the dough log is then cut into disks, and baked. I actually used these cookies to adorn a hot chocolate sundae recipe,

Makes 16-20 shortbread cookies:
For the dough:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 stick unsalted butter
a pinch of salt
1/4 cup cacao nibs
1/4 cup coarsely chopped dark chocolate
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg yolk

In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, butter, and salt until everything is combined into a sandy-textured dough. To that, mix in the cacao nibs and chocolate first, and then the vanilla and egg yolk to form your dough. Place your dough onto about a 15 inch-long strip of cling wrap and be sure to cover the entire dough in it. Roll the dough until it forms a log that is about a 12-inch long by 2-inch in diameter log of dough. Refrigerate the dough log for at least 1 hour. It should be completely solid.

For garnish:
1 1/2 cups Indian sugar crystals
1 egg white

Pour enough Indian sugar crystals to cover the bottom of a 12-inch long sheet tray. Remove your dough log and brush half of the exterior with egg white. Place that side down onto the Indian sugar crystals, and then brush the other side with more egg white. Roll the entire dough log into the crystals, making sure that everything is covered in it. Cut out 1/4 inch-thick disks from the dough and place onto a lined sheet tray, keeping each disk of dough about 2 inches apart from each other. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes. Allow the cookies to fully cool before removing from the sheet tray and transferring to an airtight container.