The magical fudgy texture makes up for all the powdered sugar mess. 445: Red Bean Crinkle Cookies

I couldn’t resist adding cocoa powder to the dough, but I promise there’s a real reason this time! (Besides the fact that everything is better with chocolate.) The recipe called for non-sweetened red bean paste and I only had pre-made sweetened paste, so the cocoa powder added bitterness to cut through the onslaught of sugar.

Speaking of chocolate, I just got Edd Kimber’s Chocolate Baking book today and I’m so excited to dive in! Just in time too, since I think I’ve officially entered my I’m-willing-to-splurge-on-good-chocolate era.

Each crinkle cookie turns out a little differently, with the powdered sugar coating cracking in every which way as the butter in the dough melts and spreads in the oven.

The recipe suggested rolling each dough ball in granulated sugar once and powdered sugar three times, which seemed a bit excessive. But joke’s on me – it’s almost like a magic trick how quickly the powdered sugar coating melts into the dough. Do the multiple rolls if you want a cute crackly design!

To use up the whole package of bean paste, I quadrupled the recipe. Casually using a pound of butter on a recipe I’ve never tried before. Eeek. There should be a specific word for the anxiety of potentially wasting ingredients on a new recipe.

Sparkly sugar sand.

Red bean freckles.

Ready to roll after a four-hour fridge nap.

Instead of granulated sugar, I went with clear sparkling sugar with a coarser texture for more of a crunch.

I can’t get over their cute lil shadows!

While they were yummy warm, they’re even better room temperature once the texture has set into a luscious fudgy crumb.

Happy munching!

Recipe mostly from: https://whattocooktoday.com/red-bean-paste-crinkle-cookies.html