The thing my sister Clair and I remember best about grandma's cookies was how enormous they tended to be. Sometimes Grandma would bake cookies and then meet one of us kids at the school bus stop to send us home with some of her homemade treats. She made a fair amount of oatmeal raisin cookies for us, but I also recall the occasional batch of super-sized chocolate chip or sugar cookies.
In keeping with Grandma's big cookie tradition, I scooped out extra large spoonfuls of this sesame cookie dough, baking six cookies per cookie sheet. As the butter and brown sugar caramelized in the oven, a wonderful aroma filled our kitchen. The cookies turned out thin, crispy, and almost as big as Frisbee golf discs, according to my sons. Because we're talking about cookies, this was a compliment.
In fact, all my live-in recipe testers would highly recommend this recipe that Grandma copied down from a "Farmer paper" of June 1976. She noted that it was originally published in the book Colonial Cooking of 200 Years Ago.
I followed the recipe with no variations to the ingredient list, but have added a few details and modified the instructions slightly.
3/4 cups sesame seeds
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Place sesame seeds in 12-inch skillet and toast over medium low heat, just until slightly browned. Watch carefully to prevent them from getting too dark.
Line baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon baking mat. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl and then stir them into the creamed mixture. Mix in the vanilla and sesame seeds. Drop by heaping #70 cookie scoop about 2 inches apart on lined baking sheet. (I made six cookies per baking sheet.) Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned on edges. Let stand on baking sheet for a minute or two to set before removing to cooling rack. Makes two to two and a half dozen large cookies.