Be Fierce, Be Awkward: Buckwheat Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting

When I first tried my hand (or rather, my body) at yoga, it was embarrassing, to say the least. I couldn’t breathe correctly, I couldn’t downward-dog correctly, and I couldn’t figure out how everyone around me was so damn flexible.

Fast-forward to today, where I’m still a bit of a joke and my flexibility has only marginally improved. However, I continue to attend class after class because the point of yoga, and anything really, is not to be perfectly beautiful at it. The point is, as the instructor said to me, to be fierce and to be awkward, for that means you are trying and are willing to persist even if you may look like this while doing it.

These cookies were a product of the F/A dynamic. They began as sandwich cookies until I went Sasha Fierce on them and baked in some buckwheat and nutmeg and slathered them in frosting. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

Buckwheat is actually a seed, not a grain, making it gluten-free. While the increased protein is a “healthier” substitute (I use quotations because after all the butter and sugar, how healthy is it really?), it makes baked goods crumblier because it is far more absorbent than regular flour. It’s best to mix it with regular flour on a 1-to-1 ratio – you’ll still get a delicious, nutty flavor without your baked goods falling apart on you.

And there’s the frosting. I actually dislike all frostings except for cream cheese, so I opted for that combined with white chocolate, because duh, these cookies are fierce. The not-so-fierce part comes when I end up with frosting all up my arms from reaching into the bowl to eat it spread it over the cookies and my roommates stare at me in confusion and intrigue. It happens.

These cookies take time, so if you are short on it, make the frosting and/or dough ahead of time and bake and frost when you can. While they weren’t the sandwich cookies I originally set out to make, they burst with flavor and are a nice balance of tender cookie to sweet white chocolate and cream cheese.

The frosting fiascos are worth it.

Pac-man cookie!

Buckwheat-Nutmeg Cookies with White Chocolate-Cream Cheese Frosting

Cookies:

8 oz butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup buckwheat flour
2 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 egg

• Cream the butter until soft and fluffy, about two minutes on high speed. Add sugar and continue to mix until the mixture is nearly white, about 6 minutes.
• Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add egg, beating until incorporated.
• Add both flours, salt, and nutmeg all at once and mix on slow until everything comes together. Scoop the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap. Wrap tightly and press it into a rectangle. Refrigerate the dough for 2 hours or overnight.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and either spray cookie sheets with nonstick spray or line with a Silpat/parchment paper.
• Roll the dough out until it is about 1/2-inch thick.
• Punch out rounds with your cookie cutter (or a shot class, if you’re classy like me). Bake the cookies for 8 minutes, turning cookie sheets halfway through baking. Cool completely before frosting.

Frosting:

4 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup white chocolate
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup powdered sugar

• In a heat-proof bowl, microwave white chocolate at 10-second intervals until melted, mixing each time. Set aside.
• Beat cream cheese and butter. Add in white chocolate and vanilla.
• Add powdered sugar and mix until everything is incorporated. With a small offset spatula, spread frosting onto cooled cookies and let frosting set. Then you can stack them in a tupperware and store them for up to 1 week.