Next week is an
important holiday for
members of the tribe. And by important I mean this particular holiday
has really good food. We ring in the Jewish New Year year with
sweetness. Everything is all apples and honey and then more apples and
honey. Apple cakes, honey cakes, apple and honey cake...all the flavors
of comfort. If you've never had a good honey cake, I can see why this
might not excite you. In our family, our cousin Claudia makes a honey
cake worth living another year for. It's spicy and sweet and kind of
sticky. Nobody dares compete with her cake, there is no winning.
This
year, I thought it would be nice to send my nieces and friends in far
away places honey cookies to ring in the new year. I found a recipe on
pinterest for honey cookies that looked like a good place to start. This
is the recipe I used (
click here for the original recipe).
It was a good base but I knew just from
reading it that it was going to lack the flavor of Cousin Claudia's
cake.
I followed the recipe and added 1/8 teaspoon of Allspice and one
teaspoon of Cinnamon.
The original recipe also calls for
rolling the cookie dough in Sugar in The Raw (Turbinado sugar) before
baking. I hate this sugar. It reminds me of the time our mom went on a
healthfood kick and added raw sugar and raw sunflower seeds to
everything. So in my mind, Sugar In The Raw tastes like cigarette smoke.
Despite that, I rolled one dozen cookies in the Sugar In The Raw just
to see how it was.
I rolled the other dozen in granulated white sugar.
Granulated white sugar makes me so happy.
I baked the cookies for ten minutes and let them cool on a cooling rack.
First
I tried the cigarette smoke version. BAD texture. If you closed your
eyes and ate the cookie you might think you were eating a gluten-free,
whole grain SOMETHING. It was hard to tell what flavor it was and the
rough textured sugar did not help. Then I tried the white sugared
cookie. It was sweet and good and had a melt-in-your mouth texture.
There were no sharp bits to compete with the subtle honey flavor. Now
about that subtle honey flavor-- if I were to make these again, I would
double the amount of spices I added. These cookies are very mellow,
especially compared to an amazing honey cake.
One great thing about this
recipe is you can make it with your kids and that would be a fun
tradition. Chat, laugh, roll cookie dough in sugar together. I think
making cookies with the kids you love is actually the most important
part of any holiday.
Overall, I would say they are nice cookies
when not rolled in cigarette smoke hard sugar. The recipe for sure needs the allspice and cinnamon. If you like the flavor
of honey, even better. They are perfect for Rosh Hashanah in addition to
other treats.

*My husband did not grow up eating honey
cake. I made him do a taste test on the cookies. He chose the one rolled
in white sugar (B) and wouldn't eat the other one. That being said, I know that honey treats are like kugel. If you don't grow up eating it, you either love or hate it.