Home › Extra-Special Company Cakes and Cookies › Honey Cookies
Honey Cookies
1/3 cup shortening 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup honey 1/2 lemon (grated rind) 1 egg, well beaten 1 1/2 cups flour 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup chopped nuts sugar Cream shortening and sugar; add honey, lemon rind, egg, then the dry ingredients, sifted together. Mix well and roll out 1/4 inch thick. Brush over with white of egg, sprinkle with sugar and nut meats, and cut. Bake on a greased baking sheet until golden brown. This makes eighteen 3 inch cookies.
A rolled honey cookie from the era when "shortening" meant vegetable shortening or lard and bakers were trusted to know their own ovens. The recipe gives neither temperature nor time, so both need supplying.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. A rolled cookie of this richness bakes at 375F for 8 to 10 minutes; honey browns faster than sugar alone, so check at 7 minutes and pull them when the edges are set and golden.
- Chill before rollingThe dough is soft and sticky from the honey and will fight a rolling pin at room temperature. An hour in the refrigerator, then rolling between sheets of parchment, makes 1/4 inch thickness achievable without flouring the dough tough.
- Glaze and cut in that orderThe recipe has you brush with egg white and sprinkle before cutting. Topping the whole sheet of dough and cutting afterward keeps sugar and nuts off the cut edges.
- Baking powderTwo and a half teaspoons to 1 1/2 cups flour is generous by current practice. Modern double-acting powder at that rate gives a puffy, slightly cakey cookie; 1 1/2 teaspoons produces a crisper one.
- ShorteningUse solid vegetable shortening for the flat, tender crumb the recipe intends. Butter will taste better with the honey and lemon but spreads more, so chill the cut cookies on the sheet before baking.
- HoneyAny mild honey works; a strong buckwheat or chestnut honey will overwhelm the lemon. Measure it in the same cup used for the shortening and it will slide out cleanly.
- The leftover yolkOnly the white is used for the glaze. Thin it with a teaspoon of water so it brushes evenly rather than dragging the soft dough.
- YieldEighteen 3-inch cookies, as stated.
Honey-sweetened rolled cookies scented with lemon rind recall the German and central European Honigkuchen and Lebkuchen tradition, where honey was the older sweetener and citrus peel a festive flavoring; no direct line of descent can be traced for this particular recipe. By the time this book was written, honey in an American cookie was a matter of taste rather than necessity, though it also kept the cookies soft longer than sugar alone, honey being hygroscopic. The placement under "Extra-Special Company Cakes and Cookies" suggests a cookie meant for guests rather than every day.