Recipe: A salted moringa glaze for sugar cookies

And the easy marbling technique to up your cookie decorating game

Read about the climate case for moringa—and a New Orleans pastry chef’s tips for baking with it—in last week’s newsletter.

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My bar for sugar cookies was set high early in life by Uppercrust Bakery in Gainesville, Florida. Marble-glazed cookies shaped like tulips, leaves, and feathered turkeys marked the passing of Florida seasons better than the outdoor temperature in Gainesville, which hovered enthusiastically around swamp-like most of the year. 

Sugar cookies are the rare dessert that’s both easy to make at home yet also feels worth splurging on at a bakery—which I think comes down to a striking, marbled glaze. And the technique is easier than you might think.

All you need is a simple powdered-sugar glaze in two colors. You drizzle one over the other in a large bowl, and then dip each sugar cookie in gently, lifting it up with a flick of your wrist that shakes off excess and pulls the colors toward center in a kaleidoscope. 

Here, I used a salted moringa glaze as my base. It gives the cookies a green veneer that reminds me of Florida pines whizzing by out the window on I-10, and a flavor like tea and beach salt. Find them at my one-day bakery (tentative name: Panhandle Pastry), or make them yourself using the recipe below.

For plant-based sugar cookies

I like this recipe from Nora Cooks, which creates a soft, bakery-like sugar cookie using plant-based butter.

Before baking, I tipped the tops of the cookies sideways so they’d look a little hurricane-swept, as most Florida pines do.

For the glaze

Makes enough glaze for 24-30 sugar cookies

Salted moringa glaze

• 3 cups powdered sugar

• 4-5 tablespoons plant-based milk (or sub dairy)

• 1 tablespoon moringa powder

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• ¼ teaspoon almond extract

Optional white accent glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar

• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon plant-based milk (or sub dairy)

To make the moringa glaze: In a medium bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar and four tablespoons of milk until smooth. Add the moringa, almond extract, and salt and whisk again. The glaze should be fairly thick but should run off a cookie easily. Do a test with one cookie, and then, if you want it a little runnier, add the fifth tablespoon of milk.

If using the white accent glaze, whisk together the powdered sugar and milk in a separate small bowl.

When you’re ready to glaze your (fully cooled) cookies, drizzle the plain glaze over the moringa glaze, and swirl the white streaks a couple times with a fork. This mixing is not unlike the Atlantic ocean circulation that climate change threatens to disrupt, so swirl with the abandon of a sweating oceanographer.

Dip each cookie into the glaze just enough to ice the top half (don’t submerge it unless you seek a life of stickiness), then twist and lift the cookie to rid it of excess glaze. 

Place cookies on a cooling rack and let the glaze harden, 12-24 hours, or slightly less in a heat wave. After drying, the glaze will be matte and the cookies will be satisfyingly stackable. 

Here’s a video of the marbling process.

What else are you making with moringa?

Leave a comment and inspire us!