Cuca Cookies (Colombian Panela Spice Cookies)

5 from 1 vote

Cucas are dark, chewy Colombian cookies made with wheat flour and a syrup of panela boiled with whole cloves, spiced with cinnamon and ginger. There are no eggs in the dough, which is why they keep for days. They bake in about 20 minutes and make roughly 10 cookies.

Prep Time10

Cook Time20

Total Time30

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Colombian

Keyword: cuca cookies

Servings:

Calories: 210kcal

Author: Angela Giraldo

Ingredients

½ cup water
250 g panela, chopped small or grated about 9 oz; piloncillo is the same thing, or dark brown sugar plus 1 teaspoon molasses
5 whole cloves the spice, not garlic
2 cups all-purpose flour sifted
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
4 tablespoons salted butter if using unsalted, add ½ teaspoon salt to the dough
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons oil for greasing the baking sheet

Instructions

Make the syrup. Put the water, the panela and the whole cloves in a pot over medium-high heat and stir until the panela has dissolved completely. You should end up with about a cup of dark syrup. Let it cool slightly and fish out the cloves.
Preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C).
Sift the flour and mix it with the cup of syrup, the ground ginger, the cinnamon, the butter and the baking soda. Work it just until it comes together into a dough: do not knead it, or the cookies turn hard instead of chewy.
Grease a metal baking sheet with the oil.
With floured hands, roll small balls of dough and set them on the tray. Flatten each one with your fingers or the back of a fork until it is round and about ½ cm (¼ inch) thick.
Repeat with the rest of the dough, leaving room between them: these cookies spread as they bake.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until the edges are set and the surface looks dry. They will still feel soft in the middle, and that is right.
Take them out, lift them off the tray and let them cool. They firm up as they cool and keep firming for the first hour.

Notes

The butter in this recipe is salted. If you use unsalted butter, add ½ teaspoon of salt to the dough. Cucas keep for several days in a closed tin and the spice settles as they sit, so they are often better on the second day.

Nutrition