“They are hands-down the best cookies that can be bought in a store. Worldwide!”

Sam is pretty enthusiastic about Bärentatzen, a soft, slightly spicy chocolate cookie in the shape of a bear’s paw (or shell, as the French name Coquillage would suggest).

For Sam, only one variety of Bärentatzen exists, Migros brand. Don't even think about Coop brand, or free samples at the Kambly cookie factory.

I’ve used these store bought cookies often in other recipes (Bärentatzen Cheesecake, Bärentatzen Tiramisu), but never quite managed to make a passable homemade version.

However, with help from the excellent Swiss baking blog Streusel (whose recipe and video you can find here), I finally made a comparable version.

There aren’t a lot of recipes online or in my Swiss cookbooks for Migros style Bärentatzen (many are nutty or vanilla-laced bear paws dipped in chocolate, like Betty Bossi’s recipe here) so I am indebted to Streusel for her version. A very similar vegan version can be found on Fooby.

130 g butter, room temperature

40 g icing sugar

20 g honey

1 egg white, room temperature

1 tbsp milk

120 g flour

50 g ground nuts

20 g cocoa powder

1 tbsp Lebkuchen spice mix

Glaze

75 g icing sugar

2 tbsp water

Preheat oven to 180 C / 350 F / gas mark 4.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, icing sugar and honey. Beat in the milk and egg white.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, ground nuts, cocoa powder and spice mix. Add this to the butter mixture and stir just until combined.

Put the ingredients in a piping bag fitted with a large open star piping tip.

Pipe your bear paws (about 2x3cm) onto the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for about 8 minutes or until they are set.

While they are baking, prepare the glaze by whisking together the icing sugar and water.

Once the cookies are out of the oven, let them sit for a couple of minutes and then glaze.

• If you don’t have Lebkuchen spice mix, mixed spice or gingerbread spice can be used.

• Alternatively, you can make your own:

Lebkuchen Spice Mix

Mix together:

1 tsp each ground ginger, anise, cinnamon, coriander
1 generous pinch ground nutmeg and cloves

• I used ground almonds in these cookies, but you can also use hazelnuts.

• For a tutorial on piping the cookies, Streusel has a great video.

• In baking school we would often put a blob of batter on the baking sheet to hold the parchment in place—Streusel’s use of magnets is much more elegant.

• There are two ways of glazing the cookies: you can carefully brush on the glaze with a pastry brush, or you can gently dip them in the glaze. Dipping was a bit messier, but I found when I used the pastry brush I ended up breaking off some of the delicate peaks of the cookies.