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Chai Spiced Jaggery Caramel Cookies
As seen on TV
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Who made this dish?
Signature challenge: 30 identical American-style cookies in two hours, any flavor, with an appropriate decorative finish, crisp to the bite with a chewy center. Honoring his Bangladeshi heritage and his grandmother's recipes, Yannis packed his chai spiced cookies with dates and pistachios, filled them with jaggery caramel and topped them with rose petals. The flavors recall the tea shops found everywhere in South Asia. {Yannis}: "This is jaggery. So this is unrefined cane sugar. Traditionally we use this in our South Asian cooking. And it's delicious, especially when my grandma used to make desserts out of this sugar." {Yannis}: "I followed Paul's recipe once for a scone." {Yannis}: "In the streets of Bangladesh, or all of South Asia, there are tea shops absolutely everywhere. And we love to drink tea almost every half an hour, just as we do here." {Yannis}: "We are filling up the crack with gooey goodness right now." {Yannis}: "So they are spiced chai cookies with jaggery caramel."
{Nigella Lawson}: "I love the look of them with your rose petals strewn all over them." [This remark comes at the end of Clara's judging, but Clara's cookies had no rose petals and Yannis's did, so it is placed here.] {Nigella Lawson}: "I love these flavors. To me, they're the flavors of a rather divinely aromatic ginger nut. But it doesn't really feel like a cookie because there isn't quite enough contrast between the outside and the inside." {Paul Hollywood}: "Too much caramel. I don't mind a little spinning of caramel on the top, but inside, that will overwhelm not only the bake but the flavor as well. I like the look of them, to be honest. You've got 30 of them. They all look pretty uniform." Later, in the judges' review, Paul named Yannis as one of the bakers in danger.
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