Waffle Cookies

Sugar cookie dough cooked in a waffle iron instead of an oven. No country is claimed; it is a modern shortcut rather than a traditional sweet. The appeal is genuinely mechanical. A waffle iron applies heat from both sides simultaneously and under pressure, which cooks a cookie in two to three minutes rather than ten to twelve, and produces something with a crisp honeycombed exterior and a soft, cakey inside, a texture no oven-baked cookie has. It also means no preheating an oven for a handful of cookies. The dough has to be a stiff one for it to work. A soft, spreading cookie dough runs out of the sides of the iron; this recipe's ratio of flour to butter gives something firm enough to hold its shape between the plates. Chilling the dough helps if yours seems slack. Greasing the plates matters more than for waffles, because cookie dough is much higher in sugar and sugar sticks and burns readily. Two to three minutes is short and the window is narrow. Sugar caramelises fast under direct contact, and there is no visual warning through a closed iron, so the first one is a test. Africa has no equivalent tradition, though Belgian-style waffles and stroopwafels are the nearest relatives.