Translucent Maple Tuiles

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Hindy of Bubie’s Little Baker. She chose Translucent Maple Tuiles which are a thin, lacy cookie. (Pronounced “twill” according to her blog.) You can get the entire recipe on Hindy’s blog. The dough for these is very simple and you can make it ahead and just bake as needed. I did make the dough a day in advance, but I’m not sure how much that helped this recipe.

I’d made Florentines before, which is a similarly lacy cookie, but they were a disaster! These cookies only use a tiny bit of dough that basically melts to a lacy wafer when you bake them. I’d made the Florentines before I had parchment paper or silicone baking mats, so I was hopeful this time. I can’t say I wasn’t nervous though. I was worried that I hadn’t mixed the butter in enough, since I noticed some small chunks of butter in the dough.

I had read the question and answer that the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers have each week, and some people said they had the best luck using parchment paper. I was really hoping to use my silicone baking mats so I decided to try both: one cookie sheet with parchment, one with the baking mat. I found that both work ok, although I had better luck shaping the ones that I baked on the silicone mat. It seems like the ones baked on parchment went from too fragile to touch to so cold you couldn’t shape them. They did turn out remarkably well, so I was super pleased. It didn’t matter that there were little chunks of butter in the dough, everything just melted together anyway. I baked mine for 6 minutes as they seemed to dark after 7 minutes.

I shaped mine around cream horn molds, which gave them a very nice shape. I filled them with whipped cream so that you could see the lovely lacy pattern of the tuiles. The maple flavor shines through in these; I think this is the best use of maple syrup that I have every encountered. I loved these! They were great plain, great with whipped cream and I’m sure that you could use them as an accompaniment to ice cream or some other dessert.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 173