After taking on a bake with a serious degree of difficulty with make-your-own-strudel-pastry last week, it was time for something at the opposite end of the scale: a simple, unpretentious cookie that takes minimal effort and skill to prepare but delivers lovely flavour and texture. In short, Azerbaijan’s butter cookies called Shaker churek (to my shame, I have no idea how to pronounce the name).

This recipe comes from a splendid Dutch blog called the cookie companion. It’s the simplest version I found: there are other recipes that use yeast.

• 14og butter
• 100g icing sugar
• 225g flour
• 1 egg
• vanilla essence to taste

1. In a bowl, weigh out the icing sugar
2. Melt the butter, not letting it get too hot, and add it to the icing sugar: mix until smooth
3. Add the flour and mix thoroughly – you will get a dough that’s far too dry, which is fine at this stage
4. Separate the egg; keep half the yolk aside and add the other half yolk and all the white to your mix.
5. Add the vanilla essence, and mix thoroughly until you have a smooth, slightly damp dough
6. Cover and leave in the refrigerator for around an hour
7. Preheat oven to 180℃
8. Line a baking tray with a silicone sheet or baking paper
9. Divide the dough into eight equal parts (they should be just over 60g each). For each part into a ball, flatten slightly and place it on your baking sheet. Warning here: the cookies spread, so make sure you leave plenty of space around them. 
10. With the end of a finger or some other implement (like the end of a rolling pin, if you have that kind of rolling pin), make a small depression in the middle of each cookie. Fill the depression with the reserved egg yolk.
11. Bake for around 15 minutes

Like most cookies, shaker churek are really, really good straight out of the oven: but leave them to cool for a few minutes so that they don’t actually burn your mouth!

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• Food