Cookie Profile: Pomegranate Shortbread

Winter's Fruit

I've made it the goal over the last few months to create cookies which are signature for each season, either by virtue of lore or tradition. As the Yuletide approached, I reminisced on the holidays from my childhood, of the things I remembered best; the taste of gingersnaps, of peppermint candy canes, of iced sugar cookies, the scent of spiced apples and pine. I considered stories and myths tied to the season as well as the flavors and aromas and before long the image of the pomegranate had manifest as a fixture in my mind.

I remember, as a child in grade school reading Greek myths for the first time, finding the story of Persephone; of her abduction by Hades, the sorrow of her mother, Demeter, with her eventual and cyclical return to the mortal plane. It was this story which first introduced me to the pomegranate. It took up magickal proportions in my very active, young imagination. I learned it was the fruit offered to Moses as proof of the fertility of the Promised Land. It is thought by some to be the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Pomegranates, which ripen as the Earth is drawing in, offered to us as a last gift, are native to Persia and were revered there as a symbol of fertility and of the goddess Ishtar. While not something which had traditionally been part of my personal history for this time of year, I decided to make Winter's fruit the feature of the season.

The outer skin is tough and must be scored with a knife to peel it away. Picking the arils free is a delicate business, a fine hand knowing how much pressure is needed to shake the arils free while taking great care to avoid bursting them. The juice is very tart and stains the skin pink. It cuts the sometimes cloying sweetness of white chocolate perfectly, with the crushed, roasted almonds providing depth. A simple shortbread cookie, traditional for the season, seemed to be the perfect edible vehicle on which to deliver these flavors.

The process of creation was fun and the results, delicious. There is, to me, something infinately satisfying and inherently magickal about cooking and baking, using food to illustrate a broader story. The results, in this case, have been quite lovely.