Turkish Moon Cookies

At Istanbul's famed 250-year-old bakery Haci Bekir, Chris Kimball tasted ay çöreği, Turkish moon cookies with an aromatic, spiced filling made from fruit and nuts.

"Moon cookies started off as a smart way to use leftover bakery scraps as filling, the most common being walnuts, breadcrumbs and raisins, with the addition of cocoa powder and chocolate," he wrote. "The dough is rich and yeasted, though it rises little to none. The charm of this cookie is not just the shape, it is the ratio of filling to outer crust, which is high."

To make ay çöreği, rectangles of yeasted dough are filled, pressed into a log, then twisted into the shape of a crescent and baked for half an hour in a moderate oven.