Uraro

Arrowroot cookies that collapse to powder in the mouth, baked pale and stamped with a mould.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (butter).

Ingredients

• 300 g arrowroot flour
• 120 g caster sugar
• 150 g butter, soft
• 3 egg yolks
• 0.25 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Method

1. ARROWROOT ONLY -- no wheat flour at all. Wheat makes a cookie that bends and chews. Arrowroot makes one with no gluten in it whatsoever, which is why it collapses to powder the moment you bite it, and that collapse is the entire point.
2. TOAST THE ARROWROOT FIRST: in a dry pan over a low heat, stirring, 6 to 8 minutes, until it smells faintly biscuity. Untoasted it tastes of raw starch and chalk. Let it cool completely.
3. Cream the butter and sugar 3 minutes, then the yolks one at a time, then the vanilla and salt.
4. Arrowroot in, worked with a spoon and then with your hands to a stiff dough that just holds together. It will feel dry and faintly squeaky; that is right.
5. Press tablespoons of it firmly into a cookie mould or a patterned spoon, level the back off, and tap each one out onto a lined tray. Press HARD -- loosely packed, they fall apart on the tray.
6. If you have no mould, roll balls and flatten them with the base of a glass to 8 mm.
7. Chill the tray 20 minutes before baking, so they hold their edges.
8. Bake at 150C for 20 to 22 minutes. They must stay PALE -- barely coloured at the rim. Browned, the arrowroot goes bitter.
9. Leave them on the tray a full 15 minutes before moving them. Hot, there is nothing holding them together and a spatula turns them to crumbs.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes