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Christmas Honey Cookies
1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon cardamon 1 cup shortening 1 cup strained honey 1 teaspoon soda 2 tablespoons boiling water 1/4 lb. almonds, chopped flour Mix sugar with spices, cream with shortening and add honey. Dissolve soda in boiling water and add to mixture. Add sufficient flour to make a stiff dough, kneading in the almonds. Let stand over night, roll out thin, cut in squares and bake in a hot oven (425 degrees F.). These cookies will improve with age. This recipe will make 72 cookies.
A honey-spice cookie of the northern European Christmas type, meant to be made well ahead and to harden and mellow in the tin. The recipe leaves the flour open, which is normal for honey doughs but needs a starting figure.
- Flour quantityThe original gives none. Expect roughly 4 to 4 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour for a dough stiff enough to roll thin; add it a cup at a time and stop when the dough no longer sticks to the hand. Older honey recipes commonly leave the flour open, since honey and flour both vary.
- ShorteningHere the word indicates a solid fat, usually lard or a solid vegetable fat rather than butter. Any solid fat at cool room temperature will cream properly; butter gives more flavour and a slightly softer cookie.
- Strained honeySimply liquid honey with the comb and wax filtered out, which is what any jar of honey is today. If yours has crystallised, warm it gently until pourable before creaming it in.
- Soda and boiling waterThe soda dissolved in boiling water is the only leavening. Add it while still hot and mix at once; it reacts with the acidity of the honey.
- The overnight restThe recipe calls for the dough to stand overnight; keep it at cool room temperature. Resting lets the flour hydrate and makes a very soft honey dough easier to roll.
- Rolling and cuttingRoll to about 1/8 inch on a lightly floured board. Squares can be cut with a knife or pastry wheel and leave no trimmings.
- Oven and timing425F is correct but unforgiving with honey, which browns fast. Thin squares need only 6 to 8 minutes; pull them when the edges are set and the centres still look slightly soft.
- AlmondsA quarter pound is about 1 cup chopped. Chop them fine, or the dough will tear when rolled thin.
- KeepingThe recipe's claim that they improve with age is consistent with hard honey cookies, which soften and mellow in a closed tin. Store airtight. The yield of 72 assumes small squares.
Honey cookies of this kind belong to the central and northern European Christmas baking tradition, the family that includes German Lebkuchen and Pfefferkuchen, Danish honningkager and Dutch taai-taai. Honey was the keeping sweetener long before refined sugar was cheap, and a honey dough stays edible for weeks, which is why such cookies were baked ahead of the holidays rather than eaten the day they came out of the oven. Cardamom with cinnamon is a spicing associated with Scandinavian baking, though it does not by itself fix the recipe's origin. Soda dissolved in boiling water is an older leavening method that predates reliable commercial baking powder, and German bakers are recorded as maturing Lebkuchen dough for far longer than a single night.