Posted by on Oct 16, 2012 in Ginger, Ginger Molasses | 4 comments

Bushel & Peck Bakeshop
3907 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd – Portland
$1.50

I know I just wrote that I’m having a chocolate chip moment. But my current jam? Sesame seeds. Sesame seeds in sweets, specifically. A drizzle of tahini (sesame butter) and honey with a sprinkle of sea salt on vanilla ice cream? I’m serious. It’s perfect. Do it!

And then the other day my friend Robin picked up a pack of assorted sesame candies at Fubonn, a large Asian grocery store in SE Portland. After tearing into the package before even getting past the exit, we decided we wanted to marry them – especially the black sesame variety. Good shit.

So…when I popped over to the newly-opened Bushel & Peck Bakeshop for the first time the other day and saw this handsome, mahogany ginger molasses (already one of my very  favorite cookies) bespeckled with white sesame seeds, I was sold. Sold!

This would be a worthy cookie even without the seeds:

• chewy, yet firm (in other words, it’s sturdy and won’t fall apart when you tote it in your bag).

• deeply flavored – not shy on the molasses

• studded with small chunks of crystallized ginger

• appropriate use of salt. Bushel & Peck gets “that sugar shouldn’t go without salt”, a sadly rare understanding amongst bakers – both professional and novice.

• …and then those seeds. No, I am not saying that I want sesame seeds every time I eat this kind of cookie, but I welcome this one into my ginger molasses rotation with very open arms. It totally works.

FYI: This was not, by any means, the only delicious thing I tasted here. More posts on B&P to come, almost certainly.