Honey Cookies Recipe: Dry, Fragrant Cookies with Natural Honey

Name: Honey Cookies Recipe: Dry, Fragrant Cookies with Natural Honey
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Wheat flour 2 cups; Natural honey 1-3 tbsp; Sugar 0.5 cup; Eggs 4; Butter 40 g; Cloves, cinnamon, baking powder, lemon zest, vegetable oil (for greasing) to taste

Long ago, my grandmother sometimes baked delicious honey cookies in the summer, and I loved them. They were very fragrant, with the delicate smell of real honey. They had simple shapes, since back then there was no variety of cookie cutters. As a rule, they were thick and quite hard. They kept for a long time without going stale, so they were baked in quantity to last.

Dry cookies are common all over the world. Usually they are small flour-based pastries. When people call them dry, they mean their moisture content is low. By the way, one of my favorite and truly dry cookies is biscotti. It has lots of nuts and candied fruit, and is made from a sponge-type dough that is dried out further after baking.

Most people prefer soft or crumbly cookies. I, on the other hand, have always liked hard biscuits and oatmeal cookies, the kind you could buy in any shop. Sweet gingerbread of various kinds was eaten with a certain indifference. Summer holidays were another matter, when we spent the whole day running around on “important” business, and sweet honey gingerbread was a real treat. It was great!

Natural honey gives baking an incredibly pleasant aroma. The sweetness of the dough usually comes from ordinary sugar. The amount of honey is small: a few tablespoons per kilogram of flour is enough to make honey cookies very fragrant. Besides, different kinds of honey smell completely different, and their shade can change the color of the baking considerably.

I like linden honey and wildflower honey best. These are light varieties with an intense aroma. Natural sunflower and buckwheat honey are more common, and they are very dark. Take care not to buy an artificial or adulterated product. It looks like the real thing but is made of sugar, glucose and so on.

For this baking we make a sponge-type dough with eggs and natural honey. Everything is as usual: sifted flour, eggs, butter or margarine, sugar. We add baking powder. We don't use baking soda, since it's very hard to get the dose right and an aftertaste almost certainly remains. The amount of honey in the dough depends entirely on the situation and your taste. You need to consider the aroma, consistency and color. Also, don't overbake the cookies, because honey doesn't like prolonged heat.

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Ingredients

40-50 cookies

Wheat flour 2 cups
Natural honey 1-3 tbsp
Sugar 0.5 cup
Eggs 4
Butter 40 g
Cloves, cinnamon, baking powder, lemon zest, vegetable oil (for greasing) to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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We bake homemade honey cookies from a dough close to sponge dough. It contains no water, only flour, eggs and additions: sugar, honey, spices and butter. If you want the cookies to be puffier, add baking powder to the flour. For aroma we add ground cloves and cinnamon. And to mask the smell of egg yolks, we add lemon zest.
Grind 4-5 cloves and a piece of cinnamon stick in a mortar. Or use 0.5 tsp of ready-ground cinnamon. Be sure to sift the mixture through a tea strainer. In a large bowl, mix 2 cups of sifted wheat flour with 0.5 tsp of baking powder. If you like, you can skip the baking powder, and then the cookies will be thinner and drier. Add the spices and sugar and stir.
Add the butter, softened at room temperature and cut into pieces. Add the eggs. We use one whole egg and three yolks. Knead the dough. Grate in the zest of half a lemon, which is needed so the honey cookies don't smell of yolks. Knead the dough once more. Add the honey. If the honey is fragrant and runny, 1-2 tbsp is enough. You can add more if it is crystallized.
Knead the dough thoroughly by hand until it is uniform. It should be soft and not sticky. You can add flour in small portions. If the dough turns out too stiff, add an egg yolk, some butter or a little honey. If the dough is still slightly sticky in the end, that's normal. Roll the dough into a ball, cover with a cloth and leave for 10 mins.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a baking sheet with baking paper. You can grease it with a drop of vegetable oil. Divide the dough into 3-4 parts, which is easier to work with. Grease the table with a drop of vegetable oil so the dough doesn't stick to the surface. With your palms, flatten a piece of dough into a sheet 12-15 mm thick. You will need cookie cutters of various shapes. Cut out the honey cookies and transfer them to the baking sheet.
Knead the dough scraps together and cut out more cookies. Usually two cups of flour make 2-3 baking sheets of cookies. You can bake them at the same time or one after another. Put the baking sheet in a well-heated oven. Baking takes about 20 mins, but check doneness by eye. As soon as the bottoms of the cookies start to darken, they are done.
Take the honey cookies out of the oven and transfer them to a plate or a basket. Let them cool well. At first the cookies are a little soft in the middle, but after cooling they become pleasantly dry. Bake all the cut-outs. By the way, this makes a lot of cookies.
Honey cookies are a real treat, and especially good with fragrant tea. As children we always felt there wasn't enough honey in them, so we simply dipped them in honey and washed them down with milk. Morning coffee with these cookies is incredibly good.