Even someone as relatively jaded as I can occasionally still have my brain rewired by a tweet, for example, the claim by Folu (of Unsnackable acclaim) that chocolate chip cookies should have 30% less chocolate. (And I am nothing if not a scholar; historians found records of this opinion dating as far back as 2014.) It seems counter-intuitive — what, after all, is the point of chocolate if not to push you to take its presence to the extreme in every possible application — and yet it makes sense; cookies themselves should be the main character, not a merely tolerated and oversaturated vessel, if you want it that much just eat some chocolate. It was this tweet that guided my hand while making these kūmara chocolate button cookies; each softly mountainous ball of dough holds three chocolate buttons, tops, and that contained rarity only adds to the chocolate’s allure.

It’s not the greatest issue facing our society currently but for reasons I’ll never fathom even if offered a plausible explanation, the canned food industry collectively decided that New Zealand simply does not need access to canned pumpkin despite said pumpkin being an extremely chill and normal vegetable here in its unpreserved form. This gatekeeps an entire genre of pumpkin-based recipes (aka, the remaining portion of American baking and desserts that don’t involve peanut butter). I got it in my head that I wanted a pumpkin cookie interstrewn with a modest quantity of chocolate buttons, then upon remembering the no-canned-pumpkin situation pivoted to kūmara (or sweet potato as Americans would know it) and used the microwave to obliterate its cellular walls into something tender and foldable. A quick five minutes rotating warmly and the kūmara becomes easily pliant (and see the recipe notes for specifics) with almost enough convenience to make one forget how annoying the aforementioned no-canned-pumpkin thing is. Not currently having the time or energy to do my own culinary mathematics, I’ve lightly adapted this Baker By Nature recipe and found it worked excellently.

This recipe makes sturdy, puffy cookies with a slightly cakey, loose-textured crumb and gently crunchy edges; the snappish reward of the chocolate buttons, with their broad surface area, is made more delicious and easy to appreciate in their small quantity. After all that complaining and effort you can’t honestly taste much kūmara but it nevertheless lends a kind of vibrantly mellow sweetness and undoubtedly contributes to the tender texture. Pumpkin and kūmara are part of that curious subset of food suggested more by its accompaniments than itself; ergo it’s the presence of ginger and cinnamon which herald that tuber as much as anything.

That being said I wouldn’t be without the kūmara, even if it’s not entirely perceivable. I love these cookies, and all their inobtrusive components — the kūmara, the spices, the chocolate buttons — combine to make something rambunctiously delicious. And for further cookie-related adventures, I recommend my Marble Heart Cookies, my Pistachio Toffee Cookies, and these Small Batch Peanut Mocha Cookies, but I have not got these ones out of my system. I took some up home when my brother and I went up to stay for Mum’s birthday (where we also enjoyed excellent birthday cake, truly a great weekend for chocolate as well as quality time) and I will be making several more batches before long.

Kūmara Chocolate Button Cookies

Mellowly delicious, sparsely jewelled with chocolate buttons, and as easily made as eaten (even if you live in a country without accessible canned pumpkin). Though if you can get hold of it, feel free to use canned pumpkin instead. Adapted slightly from this Baker by Nature recipe.

• 125g soft butter, or 1/2 cup solid coconut oil
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1/3 cup mashed kūmara (see notes), aka sweet potato
• 2 and 1/4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, plus extra for sprinkling
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup milk or dark chocolate buttons

1: Prepare your kūmara first if need be (see notes below for instructions) and set aside to cool a little.

2: In a large mixing bowl, beat together the 125g soft butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, and 1/2 cup sugar with a wooden spoon until well-combined and light-textured. Stir in the two teaspoons vanilla, two tablespoons each of molasses and milk, and the 1/3 cup mashed kūmara.

3: Sieve in the 2 and 1/4 cups flour, the teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and teaspoon each of ginger and cinnamon and fold these dry ingredients into the butter-sugar mixture. Finally, fold the cup of chocolate buttons into this thick dough.

4: Refrigerate the dough for ten minutes, during which time you might as well turn your oven to 190C/375F and line a cookie sheet or two with baking paper.

5: Use a spoon and your hands to scoop and roll golf-ball sized portions of cookie dough, placing them about 2 inches apart from each other on the tray and flattening slightly. If you’re like me, you might want to make sure there’s a definite chocolate button visible on the top of each cookie, but as long as the chocolate is in there it doesn’t make too much difference. Bake the cookies for nine minutes, and let cool completely (or as close to completely as you can handle) before eating. They will firm up as they cool so don’t worry if they seem super fragile upon removing from the oven. Sprinkle with a little extra salt, if you like.

Makes 18-20 good-sized cookies.

Notes: to very quickly achieve mashed kūmara without much effort, stab a raw, unpeeled kūmara/sweet potato several times with a fork or the tip of a sharp knife, and microwave for five minutes on a plate. Give it one more stab to make sure it’s tender, and then carefully peel the skin away and mash the flesh with a fork. Refrigerate any leftovers and use in soups, pasta sauces, dips, et cetera.

music lately:

Aruca by Medicine; you have to wade through a certain amount of broken-glass-in-a-coin-operated-clothes-dryer noise before being rewarded with a fuzzily industrial riff that is absolutely the result of recent My Bloody Valentine exposure with beguilingly floaty, sinister vocals; though let us not presume that the initial noise isn’t without its own charms however.

Seven and Seven Is by Love, that surfy guitar feels like it’s violently roller-skating full speed ahead at you and yet? You have no inclination of jumping out of the way!

Oh to be a Movie Star/Gorgeous by Barbara Harris in her Tony Awards performance for the musical The Apple Tree; impeccable though her comic timing is throughout I wouldn’t blame you for jumping four minutes in to Gorgeous when she goes from the querulous proto-Bernadette sound into belting proper with the kind of old-timey, unrestrained star power that they rarely make anymore, (but for real, when did you last hear anyone described as irrepressible?)