French Curled Cookies

These are tuiles, the elegant French cookies that shatter into buttery fragments the moment you bite through them. The batter is deceptively simple: creamed butter and powdered sugar, flour, egg whites, and vanilla. But the technique is where the skill comes in.

Each cookie starts as just 1 ½ teaspoons of batter spread paper-thin into an oval on a greased sheet. At high heat, they bake in about 3 minutes, turning golden at the edges while the centers stay pale. The window for rolling is tiny. You have seconds after they come out of the oven to loosen each cookie and curl it around a wooden spoon handle before it crisps and becomes too brittle to shape.

Working with only four cookies per batch is intentional. More than that and the first ones harden before you can roll them. If they do stiffen up, pop the sheet back in the oven for a few seconds to soften them again.

Pro Tips

• Spread the batter as thin and even as possible. Thick spots stay soft while thin edges burn.
• Work fast after removing from the oven. Have your wooden spoon handle ready and your wire rack nearby.
• Grease the cookie sheet generously between batches. These stick aggressively to bare spots.
• Four egg whites to ⅔ cup flour gives a very loose batter. That’s correct. It should spread easily with a spatula, not hold its shape.

Variations

• Dip one end of the cooled curled cookies in melted dark chocolate for a classic French bakery presentation.
• Add a tablespoon of finely ground almonds to the batter for a nuttier flavor similar to traditional almond tuiles.
• Shape them into cups over an inverted muffin tin instead of rolling, then fill with mousse or fresh berries.