French lace times two: Maple Tuiles with orange zest, rosemary

Crisp, lacy tuile cookies are pure, sweet simplicity—maple syrup (or sugar), butter, flour and salt. Here, they’re flavored with orange zest (or rosemary). Recipes below.

MID-MARCH FOUND US IN UPSTATE NEW YORK, in the middle of maple syrup season. There, we met Dave and Cecilia Deuel. They have a small farm near Avon, New York, where they grow and sell “all-natural vegetables and berries” under the name of Moondance Gardens at their roadside market on Route 20. And between late February and early April, they make maple syrup.

As Dave and I walked out to their small woodlot overlooking the Genesee River Valley, he told me a little about making syrup. Each year, they tap about 250 trees, collecting 40 quarts of sap per tree on average. They boil the sap in a small barn by the house, cooking it down to about 1/40th of its original volume. So each tree produces about a quart of maple syrup.

Native Americans and early European settlers weren’t interested in syrup, Dave said. They cooked the maple sap past the syrup stage down to crystallized maple sugar, which could be stored without spoiling. They would cut diagonal slashes in the trees to collect the sap. Native Americans, not having metal pots, would place the sap in hollowed out logs and add white hot stones from the fire to boil it.

We left Dave and Cecilia’s beautiful farm with a quart jar of lovely amber-colored syrup, one tree’s worth. We knew we wanted to use at least a little of it to make something to post here. Marion remembered a cookie recipe she had made years ago from Joy of Cooking. The recipe’s not in the current edition; fortunately, we have an old, falling apart copy that has it.

The cookies, called simply Maple Curls, are simple indeed. They have only four ingredients—and not much of any of those. A half-cup of maple syrup, a quarter-cup of butter, a half-cup of flour and a quarter-teaspoon of salt. That’s it. They’re called curls because you drape them, still warm, over a wooden spoon handle to shape them. In theory, anyway. They quickly harden as they cool, making it nearly impossible to shape an entire batch before they become too brittle.

In France, a similar cookie is often made with sugar and almonds and formed over rolling pins to resemble curved clay roof tiles. In fact, the cookie is called a tuile (tweel), French for tile. Tuiles can also be left flat after baking, as I have done. Thin, crisp and lacy, they are often used as garnishes for ice cream, sorbet and other desserts. They’re just as delicious on their own with a cup of tea or coffee.

For something so simple, my first experience baking tuiles proved to be an interesting challenge. Also, it was an object lesson in measuring flour. I looked at a number of recipes before cobbling together my own. The two that I ended up mashing together and then customizing had one key difference: Joy of Cooking called for 1/2 cup sifted flour; the other called for 1/2 cup flour, sifted. I understand the difference. When you sift flour, you fluff it up, expanding it. So 1/2 cup of sifted flour is less flour than 1/2 cup of flour that you then sift.

For nostalgia, if for no other reason, I tried the Joy of Cooking sifted flour version first. Various recipes warned that the dough would be somewhat running. This was practically the consistency of thin ketchup. When baked, it spread into large, flat cookies that resembled brown doilies or Gothic tracery windows. And the resulting cookies tasted like maple butter candy with a slight floury aftertaste. The version with 1/2 cup of flour, sifted yielded something less beautifully lacy, but more cookielike. I was on to something.

The other issue was scale. All recipes called for using a tablespoon of the runny dough per cookie. This produced monster cookies, 5 inches or so in diameter—totally not in keeping with their delicacy. When I switched to teaspoonfuls of batter I finally got what I was looking for, thin, crisp little cookies about 2-1/2 inches in diameter.

Wanting more than maple sugar cookies, I experimented with a couple of flavorings. I made some with orange zest, some with rosemary. Both flavors worked deliciously with the maple.

Maple Tuiles with Orange Zest
Makes about 2 dozen cookies

1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest (from about 1 orange)

Special equipment: Silpat or other nonstick baking mat or parchment paper

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Sift flour into a small bowl and set aside. Melt butter and syrup together in a saucepan and bring to a hard boil for 30 seconds, stirring to combine. Remove from heat.

Stir in salt and orange zest. Gradually whisk in flour (this tool is awesome for the job) until completely smooth and free of lumps. Using a teaspoon measuring spoon, spoon batter on to Silpat-lined baking sheet. Space cookies at least 2 inches apart.

Bake cookies until browned around the edges and golden in the center, about 8 to 9 minutes. Remove from oven and let cookies cool for 5 minutes on Silpat-lined baking sheet placed on a cooling rack. Transfer cookies to paper towel-lined baking sheet or tray; they kick off an impressive amount of butter fat while baking. Wipe the Silpat with a paper towel and bake the next batch.

When completely cool, they can be stored in an airtight container for several days.

Maple Rosemary Tuiles. For this subtly flavored version, replace the orange zest with a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary. Bruise them with a rolling pin or the side of a glass to release their aromatic oils. Add to the butter and maple syrup and heat just to boiling and remove from heat. Let steep for 10 to 15 minutes, then remove the rosemary sprigs. Bring butter and syrup to a boil and proceed as with the recipe above.