Simple Cookies

A lovely old Dutch lady gave me this recipe years ago. It's a riff on speculaas and has changed over the years but the cookies are always rolled thin and cut into shapes.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (227g)soft butter
• 2 ¾ cups flour (All-Purpose or Pastry Flour work well, but I used Einkorn (100g) and All Purpose (220g) for the cookies in the picture.)
• 1 ½ cups (330g) brown sugar
• 1 egg
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ tsp each of cinnamon, ginger, cloves or whichever spices you choose

Instructions

1. Whip butter and sugar, beat in egg, then fold in dry ingredients.
2. Roll up in plastic wrap. Cool slightly in fridge.
3. Flatten the cookie dough out a little, sprinkle with extra flour, cover in baking paper, roll to 1/8th of an inch thick, remove the baking paper and cut out shapes. (You may need a little more flour.) Dip your cookie cutter in flour before cutting.
4. Bake at 375 for 10 to 15 minutes until brown around the edges.

Tips

These are the simplest, sweetest cookies that children love to help make. You can use your favorite spices and your favorite shapes.

They last for days in a sealed container. These are also perfect stored in the freezer for a cold snack during the day.

I prefer to use two flours for these cookies, one of which is 100% extraction like Spelt, Einkorn, Turkey Red or Frederick White Wheat. Then blend that flour with the All Purpose. Blending is fun, so feel free to experiment, but make sure you have enough All Purpose to hold the thin cookies together. Maybe add a few tablespoons of Dark Rye for sweetness. Or Buckwheat for that dark goodness.