Bean Thinking of You Mishloach Manot

I was feeling kind of uninspired . . . For a mishloach manot theme, I was leaning towards “Random Stuff I found in Amazing Savings.” I didn’t even want to make any hamantaschen. I racked my brain for something that could get me excited about baking again. Then I remembered these coffee bean cookies from Carine Goren’s Sweet Secrets.

This is a soft cream cheese dough cookie, with a strong mocha flavor. To get the shape, you form the dough into an oval, and then press a toothpick down the center to make an indentation (I used a piece of uncooked spaghetti to mark the cookies).

You could make these cookies using any coffee flavored dough, as in this Martha Stewart recipe for espresso bean shortbread, which is shaped the same way. I have also seen cookies shaped like this dipped in chocolate, which makes them look even more like coffee beans (or more accurately, like coffee bean candy). But, I was feeling too lazy to go to the trouble of dipping the cookies in chocolate.

Then I realized that I had already bought a bunch of bags of black bean tortilla chips and a theme was born. Coffee bean, chocolate bean, vanilla bean, black bean . . . A bean theme. If I wanted to throw in candy, there are jelly beans, too. I’m planning on adding in a bottled coffee drink and mocha cupcakes (Amazing Savings had these cool Purim-themed cupcake liners with decorative flags).

Okay, it is kind of a lazy theme, because vanilla, chocolate and coffee cover almost everything. But, it is still a theme!

I ended making hamantaschen after all, with a coffee ganache filling (8 ounces bittersweet chocolate melted with a 4 ounce of strong coffee).  I used my regular hamantaschen dough, but you could use a chocolate dough, too.

Tags: coffee, cookies, hamantaschen, Mishloach Manot, Purim