Dune Week: Sandworm Spice Cookies

Remind the new Duke of Caladan he should respect the great Shai-Hulud by bringing a batch of these spice cookies to his inauguration celebration.

Sandworm Spice Cookies

Bodies:

2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
¾ cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
½ cup molasses

Skin:

½ cup white sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp salt

To begin, mix your flour, baking soda, salt, and a measure of the spice melange (or cinnamon and ginger if you’re serving these to the new offworld rulers.) Whisk all the dry ingredients together well lest you risk your cookies baking up as flat as a sand trout instead of rising majestically.

In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg, admiring it’s immense moisture content, then sweeten it all with the molasses.

Pour your dry ingredients into your wet ones and blend them well. Once you achieve a dough, knead it a few times for good measure.

Before you start shaping your sandworms, prepare their skin by stirring together the sugar, cinnamon, ginger and salt. Set that in a nearby bowl.

Now grab a fat, three inch long wad of dough and gently work it into the shape of a sandworm. You want a wide head at the front and a tapered tail at the back. Roll the cookie in the skin coating before putting it on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. (Cooking spray is a waste of precious water). Use your fingers to give the bodies a little worm-like wiggle in the middle.

If you have a cream horn mold, press that into the middle of your sandworm’s face to open his mouth. Now use the narrow end to gently press ridge lines all along your sandworm’s back so your Fremen will have somewhere to plant their hooks. If you don’t have a cream horn mold, you can use the wide end of a chopstick to open the mouth and the narrow end to press in the ridge lines.

If you’d like, you can patiently add some broken almond slivers in rings around the interior of your sandworm’s mouth to create teeth. Skip this if you’re rushed for time or lack steady hands.

Assemble a herd of sandworms on a single cookie sheet, leaving at least 2 inches of space between them. Bake that terrifying visage at 350F for 12-15 minutes, or until the cookies have darkened and the tops look dehydrated. Don’t leave them so long that their skin cracks.

The insides will still be a little bit chewy, so let your sandworms sit out on a baking rack overnight until the desert has reclaimed their water. In the morning, you should have enough hard, fierce worms to re-conquer all of Arrakis.