What you need
All purpose flour: 1 cup (I used unbleached flour)
Chopped dates: ½ cup
Black pepper: ¼ teaspoon
Baking powder: 1/8 teaspoon
Anise seed: ¼ teaspoon
Orange zest: 1 teaspoon (Zest of one orange)
Mascarpone cheese: 1/5 cup (I used homemade)
Olive oil: 1/5 cup
Water: ¼ cup
Milk: 2 tablespoon
How I made
Preheat oven to 350F. Line two baking tray or cookie sheet with aluminum foil and set aside.
Pulse ½ cup flour with dates in food processor or mixer grinder until dates gets finely chopped, transfer to a large bowl.
Stir in remaining flour, orange zest, salt, pepper and baking powder. Mix in mascarpone cheese and oil into the center and stir until everything get incorporated. It resembles bread crumbs, to this gradually add water and knead to form soft dough.
Wrap the dough with cling wrap and set aside in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, knead dough once again and transfer to work bench and flatten them using a roller. Found this part was sticky so used a Ziploc bag and pressed a small ball of dough in between them using a roller to form a thin sheet of ¼ inch thickness.
Cut them using star shaped cookie cutter and arranged on prepared baking sheet. Brush the top of cookies with milk and bake for about 10 minutes or until they become golden brown.
Remove from the baking sheets and set aside to cool in cooling rack. Once it cooled, store it in airtight container.