I was perusing my favourite cookie cookbook, The Gourmet Cookie Book, the other day, looking for inspiration, and decided to make a recipe I hadn’t tried yet. I’m not sure why I’d overlooked these cookies before. Maybe because they look like a lot of work, dipped in chocolate and nuts.

I had no idea what I was missing.

These buttery, nutty nuggets are not only cute and delicious, they’re really not much work to make.

And they seem to get better as they age (though I know they won’t last long—they’re too tasty).

They’re made with English walnuts, but as I was savouring one with a cup of tea this morning, I thought they’d be spectacular with black walnuts. Unfortunately, I can’t test the theory, since black walnuts aren’t available here. I’ll have to let my readers in North America tell me.

Here’s the recipe as I made it. I made a few adjustments from the original, because I like whole grains in my baked goods.

For dough:
1 cup plain (all-purpose) flour
1 cup wholemeal (whole wheat) flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
220 g (1 cup) butter, melted and cooled
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup finely chopped walnuts

For decoration:
225 g (8 oz) dark chocolate, melted*
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts

Sift together flours, baking powder and salt. Beat together butter, brown sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Mix in the flour mixture on low speed, then stir in the walnuts. 

Form 2 tsp of dough into an egg shape and arrange them 2.5 cm (1 inch) apart on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake at 190℃ (375℉) for about 10 minutes, until lightly browned on the bottom. Cool on a wire rack.

Once cool, dip the end of each cookie in melted chocolate and then in chopped walnuts. (It helps to have the chocolate and walnuts in the smallest possible bowl they’ll fit in, so they’re deep enough for dipping.) Set on a sheet of baking paper to set.

* I found the proportions off on the recipe—using 2 tsp of dough gave larger cookies than the recipe called for (or maybe my idea of 2 tsp is different … I ended up with 3 dozen instead of the 4 dozen the recipe said it made), so I used less chocolate—only 100 g. But I had just barely enough walnuts for coating.