The Art of Making Haitian Dirt Cookies: A Journey of Exploration and Discovery

As I embarked on this culinary adventure, I found myself drawn to the idea of creating something unique and fascinating – Haitian dirt cookies. The concept was simple yet intriguing: take a mixture of clay, salt, and margarine, shape it into small balls or disks, and bake them in an oven until they were hard but not too firm. But as I delved deeper into the process, I realized that there was more to these cookies than meets the eye.

I began by gathering the necessary ingredients, including a type of clay that was specifically designed for consumption – edible purity being the top priority. The clay had a fine texture and a yellow cast to it, which I suspected might be due to its mineral composition being different from the clay used in traditional recipes. To ensure the best results, I refined the clay by processing it through a cloth napkin to remove any large chunks or impurities.

Next, I turned my attention to the seasoning process. According to one blog post I came across, the ideal ratio for seasoning was 10 parts of clay to about 1 part of salt and 1 part of margarine. However, I found this ratio to be a bit excessive, especially when considering that the clay itself is quite bland. After some experimentation, I settled on a more modest approach – using about half a teaspoon of salt and two teaspoons of melted margarine to create a balanced flavor.

With my ingredients in hand, it was time to shape my cookies. I lined a baking dish with parchment paper and began dolloping small balls of clay onto the surface. Using a spoon, I spread each ball into a circular shape, creating a heaping tablespoon of dough that would be perfect for baking. As I placed the cookies on the oven rack, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation – what would these dirt cookies taste like?

As I slid the baking dish into the oven, I set the temperature to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, expecting the cookies to come out firm and snappy. However, after just 20 minutes, they emerged from the oven looking a bit overdone. The edges were crispy, while the centers remained soft and sticky – not quite the desired texture. Undeterred, I reduced the temperature to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and baked them for another 20 minutes, hoping that this would achieve a better balance.

And so, my cookies emerged from the oven with a slightly firmer texture than before. While they still had a bit of cracking to contend with, they seemed more even in consistency overall. I broke one open to reveal the underside – a rough, earthy surface that belied the cookie's surprising smoothness on the outside.

Finally, it was time to taste these Haitian dirt cookies for myself. Taking a small bite, I was surprised by how quickly my saliva disappeared into the clay-like texture. The flavor was both salty and rich, with a hint of that elusive petrichor scent that I had been trying to capture all along. And yet, despite its intriguing aroma, the cookie itself was surprisingly gritty – not sandy, but rather a fine-grained dustiness that lingered on my tongue.

As I chewed, I realized that these cookies were more than just a novelty or a curiosity – they were also a testament to the resourcefulness and ingenuity of those who had created them. In times of scarcity or hardship, when food was scarce, this simple mixture of clay, salt, and margarine would have been a welcome respite from hunger and thirst. And while these cookies may not be the most palatable or delicious treats in the world, they represented something deeper and more meaningful – a connection to the earth, to tradition, and to the human experience itself.

In the end, my journey with Haitian dirt cookies had been one of discovery and exploration, but also of humility and appreciation. As I shared these cookies with friends and family, I realized that sometimes it's the simplest, most unexpected things in life that hold the greatest value – and that even in the darkest of times, there is always something to be cherished and savored.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings my beautiful lovelies! It's Emmy.Welcome back to another episode of Hard Times where I explore food and recipes from times of scarcity.Today, I'm gonna be exploring a recipe that comes from Haiti.Now, I've heard about this recipe for a long time, and it is for dirt cookies,also known as bon bon terre or bon bon te or galette. And these cookies were presented as a way to fill bellies inexpensively.Each little cookie puck cost about five cents. Women were shown making them and then selling them and children were shown eating them.So Haiti is a very impoverished country and has increasingly become more dependent on internationalexports, and with rising food costs many people are unable to purchase or buy foodso these dirt cookies were presented as a way to deal with hunger and hunger pains,and also a way to make a small amount of money. So in my research, I found a video by the World Food Program --I'll put a link to it down below --here on YouTube that explains a little bit more background about these dirt cookies or galletes.In actuality, there's a longer history of eating these cookies and it's not just to deal with hunger.So these cookies were often eaten during pregnancy by pregnant women as a source of nutrition and for minerals.And, in fact, it is quite common for pregnant women to have certain urges or cravings that they ordinarilywouldn't have if they weren't pregnant.It's believed that the fetus is telling the mother what nutrients and minerals it needs.So, of course, clay and dirt contain naturally occurring minerals and women that are pregnantoften feel satiatedwhen they have that little bit of clay or dirt and receiving that minerals. And they find that the taste is actually quite delicious.So the practice of eating earth, dirt, or clay is called geophagy, and it's been found in recorded history for millennia.So I've heard about this Haitian dirt cookie recipe for a long time, but didn't have any source of clay.But thanks to lovely Rachel who sent me a link to Grandma's Georgia White Dirt,I was able to purchase this bag of dirt.This dirt is more specifically as kaolin clay. It is used in many different things besides just potteryIncluding medicines, like Kaopectate (actually, Kaopectate since 2003 does not contain kaolin,but it did at one point) as well as Maalox and Rolaidsand other anti-diarrheal drugs and medications. And it's believed the clay absorbs impurities andcan also be used to treat food poisoning andkaolin clay is of course also used for facial masks and is often found in toothpaste.So it sounds a bit strange but it actually is more prevalent than you might expect.So the practice of eating soil dirt and clay can be found all over the world including Africa.So it's believed that enslaved peoples brought the practice from Africa to the United States and even today you can go to flea markets ormarkets or go online and purchase clay for the specific purpose of eating it.So with that a little bit of history, let's go ahead and prepare these cookies.And here it is and if I scratch it with my nail,it's pretty soft, kind of like talc. It's very, very finelike talcum powder (I think on the scale of hardness, talc is considered the softest) and doesn't smell like anything.So, on Grandma's websitethey say that you can sterilize this by either baking it at 350 degreesfor about an hour or just putting it in the microwave for a few minutes.So it says to place it in a brown paper bag --which I shall do.....Okay, and that's for sterilizing so here's my clayI just took it out of the microwave and the instructions warned not to burn itSo a word of warning now, I'm gonna use a hammer and kind of crush the pieces of clay bitWow, it's hardSo how a microwave works is that it heats the water that is inside of whatever you are warming upSo the small amount of water that was in this clay, which made that clay pretty soft and easy to scratchwas heated up andthusSterilizing our clay, but it also makes the clay much harderSo for those that eat this just as it is it probably affects the kind of experience especially texturally in your mouthSo it is much harder thanit once was so I'm noticing that when I'm breaking this with a hammerNow the reason why I'm doing this is to make this a much easier when I add the water I want these clay pieces todissolveNow we're gonna add our water mmm, did you hear that sizzle clay was hotAmazing oh my gosh, look at that it instantly just turns into clay amazing Oh, it has a lovely smellIt smells kind of like, I believe the word is petrichor. One of my favorite words.It smells like wet cement. It's like right when it starts to rain that smell of wet cement that representschildhood and riding bikesThat's what the smells like, smells pretty goodSo because the clay is hot listen to thatIt's turning into a beautiful white clay, so I'm using my hands here to kind of try to crush this upSo what I find really interesting about this recipe is that and much of the mass mediaThis is portrayed as something as a very very desperate desperate measureUnderstandably, but what I think is more interesting is that there's actually a history of eating this not just during times of faminebut as aSupplement for pregnant women. Absolutely fascinating. It makes absolute senseSo now that I have this paste, I still have chunks of clay in there. So now we're going to further refine itSo what I've got here is a plastic bucket that I've cleaned out. This is food gradeI just picked it up from my local bakeryI'm gonna use an old cloth napkin and place it over the top and this is going to be my filter of sortsTake some stringwrap it around the top,and to get it even tighter, I'm going to use a stick and kind of winch this around nowI want this really really tight because this is going to be the filterin which I'm going to process myPlay so take handfuls of this and just rub it throughSo the idea being that the chunks will stay on top and the nice and smooth clay will be pressed through the clothThere are other ingredients in these cookies as wellThis also contains salt and margarine which I'll be adding in the next steps in the videosI saw the type of clay look to be a little bit differentWhile it seemed nice and fine like this clay, it had more of a yellow cast to itso the mineral composition of it was probablydifferent than this clay, but I wanted to make sure I got clay that was ofedible purity.Alrighty, so here's my refined clayI put in a bowl so you can see it better and now we're going to season this.Now, I did find one blog post that said it was ten parts of clay up to about one part of salt and one part ofmargarine that doesn't seem quite right to me because that seems like a lot of salt butThis is clay after all. It's probably pretty bland but one part seems quite a lotbut anyways, I'm going to add about a half teaspoon of salt andand two teaspoons of melted margarineStir that togetherI've got a baking dish here lined with parchment papertraditionally these would be laid out on some cloth like a sheet andAllowed to dry in the Sun but I'm gonna speed things up and do it in my ovenalright, let's go ahead and shape our cookies, put a dollop down andThen just spread it in a circleSo a big heaping tablespoonI'm gonna put these in a 350 degree oven and bake them for about 20 minutes until they're hard.But we don't want them to be too firm. Okay, see ya'll in a little bit!All righty!So I am back and here are my clay or dirt cookies. As you can see here if this one was a little bittoo thin -- it got a little over-baked. So what I found is at 350 degrees for the thickness of clay that I applied,this was a little bit too hotSo I reduced the temperature to 300 degrees and cooked them for about 20 minutes and it seemed to work better.There was still a little bit of cracking but not nearly as bad as thisSo I made sure not to over bake these. In the BBC video where the reporter actually try theseHe said that they had the texture of chocolate, firm and snappy but not so hard as if you're, you know, biting into a rock.That's what it looks like on the bottom and let me break it for youThat's what it looks like thereIt doesn't have a smell whatsoever. So let's go ahead and give it a taste. Here we go. Itadakimasu!Wow!It's kind of an amazing reaction:every drop of saliva in your mouth instantly gets sucked into the clay.It's a little bit salty, both from the salt and the added margarine in there;the flavor is actually a lot like that petrichor smell that I was describing earlier.The experience in your mouth is very interesting because all ofthe moisture in your mouth just kind of get sucked up into the claywhich turns into kind of a mud like texture in your mouth.It's a little bit gritty, but a lot finer intexture than you might imagine.It's not sandy, just a little bit gritty, and I think that has to do with kind of that refining process ofpushing the clay through the fabric.So it's pasty, and you have to take very tiny bites,because it absorbs all of that water.So there you have it: Haitian dirt cookies or bonbon te or galette.Certainly not tasty or delicious by our standard means, but this is something out of necessity and practicality.When there's not a lot to eat, this will get you by. When you are craving some nutritional supplement,this will get you by. Big thanks to all of you who suggested this recipe.Thank you, Rachel, for giving me the link to Grandma's White Dirt. Also, please consider donating to the hunger project --I will put a link down below.Please share this video with your friends and follow me on social media. Like this video, subscribe, and I shall see in the next one!Toodaloo! Take care! Bye!!!Hello?\n"