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[1] Minnie Beasley’s gift tin, filled to the brim with simply delectable almond tuiles (photos #1, #2, #3, and #__ © Minnie Beasley’s).
[2] If you’re ordering for yourself and don’t need the gift tin, your tuiles come in a brown bag. The chocolate flavor, shown here, mixes cocoa powder with the standard almonds, butter, sugar, and flour. This makes the cookie a darker, bronzed color and gives it a chocolate flavor profile.
[3] Seasonal Maple Pecan is a must-try.
[4] The wider tuiles are formed over a rolling pin. The rolled versions are formed over a dowel (photo © King Arthur Baking).
[5] While warm, the cookies can be rolled into a variety of shapes (Abacus Photo).
[6] Classic almond tuiles, shaped like the roof tiles of Provence (Abacus Photo).
[7] What’s the difference between a cream-filled tuile and a cannoli? See the †footnote below (photo © Taste Of Home).
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Way back in 2007, THE NIBBLE wrote enthusiastically about Minnie Beasley’s cookies: buttery, lacy almond toffee cookies. They won a gold medal as “best cookie” at the Fancy Food Show the following year and we have been pleased to watch them grow over the years—still a small, artisan brand making each cookie by hand.
This means that you, too, can know the joy of Minnie Beasley’s Almond Lace Cookies*, thanks to her great-nephew Harmon Beasley Canon and his son Jackson, who has taken over the business.
And keeping up with the times, Aunt Minnie’s original recipe is also available in:
Chocolate
Gluten-free
Maple Pecan
The cookies have an almost toffee-like consistency: crunchy and buttery with a pronounced almond flavor. They strike that perfect balance between delicate and substantial, sweet and sophisticated.
Lace cookies are a Southern specialty, named for the French tuile baked to create a lacy pattern.
Lady Bird Johnson was known for her recipe. Different bakers made them in different ways, and the warm cookies can be molded into different shapes. But whatever the style, the cookies are a delicate gourmet confection, a special treat.
How Aunt Minnie’s Cookies, A Family Treat, Went Commercial
Great Aunt Minnie, a Southern lady herself, lived with Harmon Canon’s family during his boyhood in Memphis and he grew up watching her make the cookies for family and friends.
After she passed, Harmon took on the mantle, and was encouraged by friends and family to make them available to the public. A 6-person artisanal bakery was born, the cookies selling out as fast as the team could make them.
They are now being produced by the fourth generation, Harmon’s son Jackson.
Each individually handmade cookie requires a labor-intensive baking process, a commitment to craft that you can taste in every bite.
When Minnie Beasley’s pliable cookies come out of the oven, they’re wrapped around dowel rods, creating crispy cylinders when cooled.
And then, they’re packaged and sent to you.
GET YOUR COOKIES!
We’re as enthusiastic about these wonderful cookies as we were back in 2007.
Each handmade batch sells out quickly, so head to the website and stake a claim to yours:
> MinnieBeasleys.com.
Don’t forget yourself! Whether you’re enjoying one with a cup of coffee or serving them at an elegant gathering, these cookies elevate any moment into something special.
We’ve got more to say below about the history of tuiles, but first, for your consideration:
> The history of cookies.
> The 10 basic types of cookies.
> Cookie favorites: a photo glossary of hundreds of cookie varieties.
> The year’s 44 cookie holidays.
> The history of tuiles is below.
> Up next: How do the cookies get “lacy?”
[8] Yes, please!
HOW DO THE COOKIES GET “LACY?”
Not all tuiles are lacy (see photos #4 and #5). The delicate “lace” effect is created through “baking chemistry.”
Lace cookies get their name from their delicate and lace-like appearance when the sugar bubbles and creates tiny little gaps in the cookies.
The magic is in the proportions: Lace cookies require a high ratio of butter to flour, with just a small amount of flour (or sometimes ground oats).
The low flour content means there’s minimal structure to hold the dough together, so it spreads extremely thin during baking. The sugar caramelizes and bubbles vigorously in the oven, and as those bubbles form and pop, they create the characteristic openwork pattern.
The result is an ultra-thin, crispy cookie with an intricate pattern of gaps throughout.
THE HISTORY OF TUILE COOKIES
The French word tuile (pronounced tweel) refers to the curved, terracotta roof tiles that are ubiquitous atop homes in Provence and the Mediterranean basin.
The tuile cookie got its name from its curved shape, mimicking the curved roof tiles.
It’s baked as a flat disc and then, while still hot and malleable, draped over a curved surface (traditionally a rolling pin or wine bottle) to set into an arch. When arranged in rows on a platter, these delicate cookies line up like a the tiled rooftop.
While someone first draped warm dough over a rolling pin, there is no single known “inventor” of the cookie. It evolved in the 17th century or later, once refined sugar became more accessible to the French middle and upper classes.
The Tuiles Of Southern France
Because its shape is modeled after Provençal roof tiles (photo above), the tuile cookie is linked to the southn of France. These tuiles are typically the tuiles aux amandes (tweels-ohs-ah-mand), almond tuiles.
Crisp, lacy, and golden, they’re made with slivered almonds to simulate the rough texture of the clay tiles.
Because the hot-from-the-oven cookies can be molded into different shapes—cups, spirals, cones, etc.—the roof tile shape began to take on different forms in other regions.
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[9] The famed roof tiles of Provence (Abacus Photo).
The Tuiles Of Northern France
Just as well-known are the tuiles of Northern France, particularly in the styles of the towns of Beauvais and Amiens in the Picardy* region.
Tuiles de Beauvais: This town has a famous history of ceramic and tile manufacturing. In a clever bit of culinary marketing, local chocolatiers and pastry chefs created a sweet version to honor the town’s industry. Unlike the lacy almond versions of the South, Northern tuiles, like Tuiles d’Amiens) are often richer and slightly thicker, sometimes incorporating chocolate and orange.
The Normandy region, famous for its butter, is credited with perfecting the rich batter used in the classic almond tuile.
The Evolution of “Petits Fours Secs”
In French baking, the tuile falls under the category of petits fours secs, small dry oven cakes. Their evolution:
17th-18th Centuries: Sugar becomes more available; egg-white based biscuits like macarons and meringues gain popularity. The tuile likely began as a way to use up egg whites left over from making rich custards or ice creams, which use only the yolks.
19th Century: The rise of haute cuisine, heralded by the great chefs Marie-Antoine Carême and Auguste Escoffier, formalized the role of the tuile. It moved from a simple country snack to a refined garnish served alongside desserts like mousse, panna cotta, and sorbet to provide a textural crunch.
Tuile Dentelle (Crêpe Dentelle): In 1886, Marie-Catherine Cornic of Quimper, Brittany, France, got distracted and left one crêpe on the heat for too long. Instead of throwing it away, she decided to roll it up tightly to see if it was still edible. The rolling process, combined with the crispiness, created a light, flaky biscuit that became the Crêpe Dentelle (lace crêpe, as it was made from crêpe batter).
20th Century: In 1920, a large commercial brand, Gavottes, was launched and remains the major supermarket brand today.
Cigarettes Russes: In the 1920s, Pierre Delacre of the Delacre company in Brussels, Belgium, launched the “Cigarette Russe” as a refined biscuit (cookie) to serve with both tea and Champagne. He named them after papirosy, a specific type of Russian cigarette popular at the time. Unlike modern cigarettes, these had a very long, hollow cardboard mouthpiece to hold the tobacco away from the mouth. The hollow, tubular cookie perfectly resembled this shape. Note that they not a Russian recipe, as believed by some people because of the name.
Pepperidge Farm Pirouette: In 1955 Margaret Rudkin, founder of Pepperidge Farm, launched the Pirouette. It was a rolled hollow cookie, inspired by the Belgian Cigarette Russe and intended as a light, crispy garnish for ice cream or mousse, or to be served with coffee. One variety was lined with chocolate.
Caprice Crispy Wafer Rolls: In 1978, Caprice, a shelf-stable, cream-filled wafer roll, was introduced by the Greek company Papadopoulos. The initial variety was filled with cocoa and hazelnut cream. It took another 15 years or more for major U.S. brands to introduce filled versions.
Filled Rolls In The U.S.: These began to appear on American grocery shelves in the 1990s. Pirouline (not related to Pepperidge Farm’s Pirouette), a brand known for a cocoa stripe in its dough, introduced their Crème de Pirouline, filled with chocolate hazelnut, in 1993 (and subsequently, additional flavors). Pepperidge Farm followed, discontinuing their hollow and lined varieties and replacing them with the crème-filled versions (French Vanilla, Chocolate Hazelnut, etc.) that remain on the sheves today.
What’s Next?
Savory tuilles have long been made by fine chefs, filled with whipped goat cheese, truffle cream, and the like.
Might they become commercialized as “wine wafers,” e.g. Parmesan/herb or a pesto cream? Perhaps some artisan brand will launch them to the broader public.
Fusion flavors are already part of our everyday cuisine. We nominate Asian variants of the filled rolled wafer—not only popular flavors (black sesame, green tea, red bean…) but those that use coconut milk and rice flour, creating a harder, snappier roll than the buttery French version.
Stay tuned.
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*Picardy is a historical region of northern France, stretching north from the suburbs of Paris and vineyards of Champagne to the beaches of the Bay of Somme on the English Channel. The regional capital, Amiens, is a university city known for its Gothic cathedral, the floating gardens on its canals and Maison de Jules Verne, the famous adventure novelist’s 19th-century home, which is now a museum.
†A tuile is a cookie, made of batter and baked. A cannoli is a pastry, made of dough and fried in oil.
[10] An assortment of tuiles, just for starters (Abacus Photo).
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