Do you like mushrooms? I think they’re one of those foods that people either adore or hate, and there’s very little grey area left. That’s probably where I fit. I’ve never been a big fan. My mom loved mushrooms and never cooked much with them because of me I guess.
When I cook with them, I chop them finely, and hide the texture but keep the flavor. It’s exactly that, the flavor, that I like and if I ever stumble upon big mushroom chunks in a dish, I leave those on the plate. It’d kind of embarrassing but I can’t help myself. But people love mushrooms where I live. Going to the woods and coming out with a basket full of them is a favorite pastime for some. I love to go to the woods too actually, just without a basket.
Anyway, I’m not giving you a mushroom recipe today, just mushroom-shaped cookies. Isn’t that much better? I’ve always loved these. They’re a constant at family parties or similar gatherings, and they’re what I look for when I see a cookie platter.
They’re chocolaty, crunchy and have a moist nutty center. And they’re cute. I don’t normally describe food as being cute, but these really are adorable. They remind of the forest, its quietness, the beautiful trees and the cool air.
These mushroom cookies are made of three parts. The stems are made of a wonderful walnut dough and the caps are sweet and buttery. Their center is scraped out to make room for a better filling. They are filled with a mixture of cookie crumbs, walnuts, jam and a hint of rum. The cherry on top is the dark chocolate they’re dipped in. When you bite into one all these flavors connect and make a really tasty cookie.
And because I like to make extra stems, I dip those into chocolate as well and transform them into tiny tree logs that complete this woodsy cookie table.
Walnut mushroom cookies
Bring joy to the table with these mushroom cookies. Recipe makes about 40 mushrooms and 40 logs.
- Yield: 40 cookies 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: Slovene
Ingredients
Stems
- 200 grams (1 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour
- 80 grams (2/3 cup) walnut meal
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 70 grams (4 1/2 tablespoons) white granulated sugar
- 70 grams (2.5 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 egg
Caps
- 380 grams (2 1/4 + 1/2 cup) all-purpose flour, sifted
- 155 grams (1 cup) powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 150 grams (5.3 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (or paste or vanilla seeds)
Filling
- crumbs from the caps
- 50 grams (2/4 cup) walnut meal
- 1 teaspoon cocoa powder (sweetened) or chocolate powder
- 1/4 teaspoon rum (optional)
- 125 grams (5 tablespoons) apricot jam, room temperature
Chocolate glaze
- 200 grams (7 ounces) dark (70%) chocolate, broken into pieces
- 60 grams (2 ounces) unsalted butter
Instructions
- Make the stems: In a bowl, combine the flour, walnut meal and baking powder. In the bowl of your electric mixer, beat the egg with the butter and sugar. Once creamy, add the flour mixture gradually until it’s all incorporated. Form the dough into a ball and put it in the fridge while you prepare the second dough.
- Make the caps: Combine 2 1/4 cups flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl. In the bowl of your electric mixer beat the egg with the egg yolk and add butter. Mix until it’s incorporated. Gradually add the flour mixture until a ball of dough forms. It should be smooth, but not sticky. If needed add more flour (from the additional 1/2 cup). Wrap the dough into plastic wrap and cool it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
- Set the oven to 180 degrees C (356 degrees F). Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. Take the walnut dough (for the stems) out of the fridge and tear it into chunks. Roll out each chunk into a thin log and cut it into 2-3 cm (0.8-1.1 inch) long bits. Place them on your baking sheet, a few centimeters / 1 inch apart. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, until they rise a bit and are golden brown around the edges. Let them cool.
- When the dough for the caps has been properly chilled take it out. Form it into small balls and place them on the baking sheet, lined with parchment paper (can be the one you used before). Bake for about 10-15 minutes, until they rise and get slightly golden brown.
- Take them out of the oven and start scraping out the centers immediately while they’re still hot (once cold, you won’t be able to do this). Take a small knife and make small holes in the bottom of the mushroom caps. Do this above a mixing bowl, because you need the crumbs for the filling. Set the emptied caps aside.
- Make the filling: In a bowl, combine the cookie crumbs, walnut meal, cocoa, rum and jam. Mix into a paste. Fill each mushroom cap with a bit of filling (the amount depends on the size of the hole). Then gently stick a stem into the center. Wipe away any excess filling. Set the cookies aside.
- Make the glaze: Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and place it over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until the chocolate and butter melt and the chocolate is smooth and glossy. Remove the saucepan from the heat. Dip the cookies in upside down one by one and lay them on a baking sheet.
- Once all the cookies have been dipped, place the baking sheet in the fridge for 20 minutes or more until the chocolate has hardened. Do the same with any leftover stems.
Notes
Store the cookies in airtight containers in the fridge (put parchment paper in between the layers of cookies), they should last at least a week. They are best served at room temperature.
The mushroom caps might crack a bit as they bake. This should not worry you. Once you dip them in chocolate the cracks are not visible.
You can make the dough a day in advance.
You can substitute walnuts with pecans or hazelnuts.
I like apricot jam because the taste is not overpowering, but you can use any other kind. I think strawberry would work nicely too.
New:
Recipe for Strawberry almond mushroom cookies!
You are so creative! These cookies are way too adorable! Pinning!
Thank you so much Lokness! 🙂
Wow they look really cute. They would look perfect in a Christmas buffet table
Thanks Azu! And I totally agree about the Christmas table, I think they’d fit right in. 🙂
Wow these are so addable and creative! I love the use of different textures for the different aspects of the mushroom!
Thanks Kelsey, I’m glad you noticed all the textures! 🙂
These are adorable!!
Thank you, Aušra!
These look awesome! What a sweet idea for a party.
Thanks Daria. 🙂
I know this is going to sound like a godawful question being that the recipe is called “Walnut mushroom cookies” BUT is there any way to omit the nuts? Its just, i think they’re absolutely adorable and would love to give the recipe a whirl but I’m severely allergic to nuts of all types and I don’t want to destabilize the dough by just removing them.
Either way it looks like a fabulous recipe.
Hi Joan, thanks for your question!
The cookies can be made nut free, and can look very similar to these. What I would do is skip the “stems” dough completely. Make a double batch of “caps” dough and then make both the stems and the caps from that dough. You can add more vanilla beans (from 1-2 pods) which create a spotty texture in a baked cookie. For the filling, just substitute walnuts with more cookie crumbs, or use shredded coconut. You can add another teaspoon of chocolate powder (or cocoa), to get a darker color. Adjust the amount of jam if necessary, in case your filling doesn’t stick together. You could also just make one batch of the “caps” dough, as a test run, to see if the adjustments work for you (and now that I’m writing this, I think I should probably do that too).
I know some people use shredded coconut for the stems too (instead of nuts), but I haven’t actually tried that.
If you do make these, please let me know how it goes, I’d love to hear it. 🙂
Why not make the whole biscuit out of walnut, why only the stems?
Hi Jana,
I’m afraid making the tops out of walnuts could make them crumbly, especially when scooping out part of the cookie.
The tops are more tender and made that way to hold and soak up the filling.
Hope this helps!
Hi Alice,
we have just tried your recipe and we had triple fun of it. First by preparing it, second – it was surprise for one person who is real mushroom lover – and that person was very happily surprised with that present and third – they are really tasty! We just substituted the walnut meal with hazelnut meal. So thank you very much for bringing this recipe to light 🙂 …
Hi Zuzana! Thank you, I’m so happy to hear you had fun making these and that one lucky person got them as a gift.
I’m sure they taste amazing with the hazelnut meal, I should definitely try that out.
Thanks for stopping by 🙂
I actually HATE mushrooms! But I think I would love these cookies, they are so cute!!
Well, I think you can now say there actually is a mushroom you like, haha. 🙂
Hi,
I was looking through the recipe and it calls for 50 grams of walnut meal or 2/4 cups. Did you mean 1/2 cup or is there something missing?
Thanks for clarifying.
Melanie
Hi Melanie!
Sorry for confusing you. 2/4 cup is the same amount as 1/2 cup, I guess I was using a 1/4 measuring cup at the time and then wrote it down as such.
Hope this helps.
What’s the conversion for the butter ??
Hi Leeanne! Everything is converted into ounces, but if you find the conversion into sticks more helpful: 70 grams of butter is about 2/3 stick, 150 grams of butter is about 1 1/3 sticks and 60 grams is roughly 1/2 stick.
Hope this is what you had in mind and that it helps you! 🙂
Hi Alice! I am dying to try out this recipe, but wanted to let you know the links to these photos seem broken 🙁 would love to see what other photos you have posted and if there are progress photos in the making process too! Thank you!
Hi Ella!
Oh, that sucks. Have you tried reloading the page? There should be 7 photos in total, I’ve tested the link to the post in different browsers (and on different computers) and everything looks as it should on my end (all the photos are there).
Most of the photos are linked through Dropbox and maybe there was something on their side, which caused the photos not to load.
That’s all I can think of right now. :/ Let me know if reloading the page fixes the problem.
hey
me han encantado voy a probar a hacerlas gracias
What a cute idea! This would be great for a theme party. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Sabrina! And I agree! I think an autumnal / woodsy theme party would be so cool. 🙂
These are adorable! However, I tried making the stems tonight and they flattened outdoor much when i baked them. How do I get them to look like yours?
Hi Jenni,
one idea would be to chill the dough after you make the stems. The butter can soften too much, if you leave them out rolled for too long, so I’d pop them back in the fridge until they harden a bit and then bake them.
However, the bottom side will always be flat, the same as with every cookie.
Hope this helps!
Hi, for the walnut meal would it be better to grind walnuts or would a prepackaged walnut meal work? Not sure if they’d be considered the same thing.
Hi Jocelyn,
you can use walnut meal! It’s a bit drier than freshly ground walnuts, but I think both work here.
Hope this helps!
Hi there –
Few notes on this recipe –
70 grams did not = 4 1/2 tablespoons) white granulated sugar – 70g worked fine
My stems collapsed. Any idea why this may have happened?
Hi, one tablespoon is 15 grams, so 4 1/2 tablespoons would be 67,5 grams, 70 when rounded up as it doesn’t make a difference.
I don’t know why the stems collapsed though, sorry to hear that.