Monte(Caos)-Python and The Search For The Holy Ghraiba

That’s a hard cookie name to pun on folks, let me tell you. Although it did bring me to the joy and hilarity that is Monte Python, so these cookies just clearly never stop giving 😉 .

Depending on where you hail from, or which interwebs site you consult, I have seen these called Spanish Montecaos, Moroccan cinnamon melt-away cookies and Ghraiba (which also seems to have about a billion alternate spellings, but that’s a rant for another day). I don’t personally care what you call them though, when I stumbled upon a cookie that celebrates cinnamon in such a big way, I knew I was on board and totally had to make them.

Being the asshole that I am though, I of course had to completely bastardize every recipe for this that I could possibly find (traditional and nontraditional) by adding a whole whack of other stuff. Scandalous? Perhaps. Successful? Not to toot my own horn – but who else it going to do it for me, so “toot toot!”:,

but I most definitely think so.

So “traditionally” these cookies are basically oil, almond flour, flour and cinnamon (the biggest “daring” deviation I seemed able to find was that some people add anise to this as well. “Now hold on there, you crazy innovator you! Anise!!!???? You’re clearly a brazen hussy with that kind of wanton behaviour 😉 ” ).

Maybe it was because I was still feeling the remnants of Christmas flavours tickling my tastebuds, but I opted to add a little orange zest and pure orange oil to these babies. I also typically don’t tend to use tons of just straight up oil when I’m baking, so while rummaging in my cupboard to pull out my trusty bottle of olive oil, I stumbled across a forgotten bottle of sesame oil. It started calling my name like a hypnotic siren song “use me! UUUUUSSSSSSEEEEEE MEEEEE!!!! Uhhh…but not like one of your French girls, just, in the usual baking/ cooking realm. Now where was I? Right. UUUUUSSSSEEE MMMEEE!!!! SSSSEEEESSSAAAMMMEEE!!!” I mean c’mon, how could I say no to such a weird and creepy request? 😉 . Also, when I thought about it, I was already planning to add the orange, which totally goes with sesame in my opinion (Asian food anyone? In case you thought I was completely making up that tried and true flavour combo).

Toss a few flaked almonds on top of these and a light dusting of icing sugar for zazz (I just liked how pretty it looked on my cranberry almond cookies from the other week, so clearly I’m over using that little “technique” here, but for the love of sugar, I just don’t care 🙂 ), and now you’ve got yourself a black sheep cookie of the most epic kind. This is the cookie that all the others are trash talking, but secretly it’s because they’re super jealous that they’re all just too plain Jane and conservative to ever try stepping it up a notch.

“Just hold on a cinna-minute” sesame (says me) and re-o-range your schedule to find the time to make these bad boys (or girls, or pangender, or bigender, or [insert politically correct terminology here]).