Hazelnut Maple Cookies With Orange Zest From 'Ovenly'

[Photograph: Winona Barton-Ballentine]

Beginning with a base of ground hazelnuts, these cookies get an extra dose of sweetness from a tablespoon of dark maple syrup, as well as a generous roll in maple sugar. It's an Ovenly version of a similar Italian biscotto, where pistachios are ground and bound with egg whites, sugar and lemon zest. In a clever move, the lemon zest is traded for orange, which fits much better with maple's almost malty flavor.

Tips: If you've never ground nuts before, you might not realize that they can be a trial to break down. I have a tiny food processor, and so I worked in batches, grinding the nuts down until they formed the coarse meal required to make the cookies. Even if you've got a big, honking Cuisinart, a pound of hazelnuts is easier to get through when separated into batches. This is especially true if your processor gets hot while working; you don't want to end up with nut paste on the bottom, and barely chopped nuts on top. Four to eight ounces (depending on capacity) is a good portion size.

Tweaks: Grade B maple syrup, which is mixed in with the hazelnut meal and plain sugar, is hard to find in stores. Yes, it does have a unique, almost woodsy flavor, but buying a jug for twenty dollars to use one tablespoon is rarely worth it. Look for the darkest maple syrup you can find, and use that; usually you can find tiny jars of it at specialty food stores that carry lots of jams and jellies.

As always with our Bake the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of Ovenly to give away.