BarefootAndUpsideDown

Today,Christmas Eve, I heard from a very dear old friend asking about the family anise cookie recipe, as she has for so many years. When we were children, her home was my home and my home was hers. I think of Lisa as a long lost sister since we’ve been out of touch for way too many years. I was so happy to receive that email, that I am posting this closely guarded recipe in her honor! This recipe came down from my Gramma Anna Theresa Ruhland, whose family came from the eastern edge of Bavaria, near the Bohemian border. Her grandmother, Eva Hetzl traveled to Buffalo NY from a small town called Untergrafenreid in Waldmunchen.

When my mother was dating my father, she first watched Gramma Anna at work making this gargantuan recipe. My kids know the recipe well as not a Christmas has gone without a batch of Anise Cookies stored the weeks before Christmas in a big pot in the garage. There’s been many a year when we invited a group of kids over for an evening of cookie frosting. Depending upon how elaborate you get with the decorations, that can be a rather long evening. Usually, the kitchen becomes a disaster zone with colored sugar and hardened frosting EVERYWHERE.

When Aunt Buddie died close to Christmas in 1997, my sister Marie was visiting me. She corralled the kids and me into baking and frosting a batch of anise cookies, which we layered in a big box lined with bright tissue paper. We brought the pretty box to the funeral luncheon at Cousin Joan’s house. You would have thought they were long-stemmed roses when the motherless cousins opened the box and beheld gaily decorated cookies. Not a dry eye in the house.

Since Rebecca and my birthdays are the week before Christmas, there’s been more than once where we used the cookies in lieu of birthday cake. Once we even spelled out Happy Birthday in cookie dough and studded the letters with candles.

Last year in Texas, Nathaniel taught Elisabeth to make the cookies and she made a batch and sent them to my parents in North Carolina. I cried in grief for her as I mixed the dough this year.

In 1972 (or so) eldest brother, Greg, returned home after dropping out of college and living with a bunch of guys in Florida. Being the smart-assed, not to say surly teenager he was back then (weren’t we all?), I have fond memories of him and his buddy sitting around the metal kitchen table in Locust NJ, drinking coffee and making fun of the “anus” cookies.

Rabi mistakenly used cumin seed instead of anise seed one year. They were good -NOT!

I tried using peanut butter as a natural flavoring in the frosting ONCE. They were also good – NOT.

This year I ran out of flour and the only substitute I had in the cabinet was the finely ground Ethiopian flour, called teff that we were saving to make the huge African pancakes. Pretty sure None of the Ruhlands ever added that particular African twist to the recipe.

A week ago, cousin Kris in Maryland, sent me a box of anise cookies, figuring we wouldn’t be making them since Dad’s death. What a wonderful moment it was when opening that box! Her thoughtfulness will be long -remembered. Somehow the recipe from her side of the family does not use anise seed. They use (ouch) anise oil or extract. They are also quite tasty, though I won’t say they are as good as our recipe with the seeds, which I can’t help but think is more traditional. Sorry Kris. That family feud will continue good-naturedly for many years to come I hope.

Two of my sisters made batches this year and sent some to Mom, who now lives in an assisted living facility in Wilmington NC. I’m sending her one of my traditional fruitcakes. Look for that recipe next year.

If you are reading this post, you surely are becoming part of my, albeit rather extended family. I hope you enjoy the making of these cookies and feel the connection with the past even as it changes moment by moment into the present and future.

TRADITIONAL BAVARIAN ANISE SEED COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

5 cups granulated sugar

1 ½ cup milk

2 ½ cup butter

Approx. 3 oz. anise seed

6 eggs

11 tsp baking powder

Approx. 5 pounds flour I use as much whole wheat flour as I can get away with!

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix all ingredients. It helps if butter is at room temperature. Add the flour slowly creating a stiff dough.

2. Refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight. This year I kept the dough in the fridge for several days with no ill effects.

3. Roll dough out and cut with cookie cutters. Thickness is an individual taste here. I like them a good half inch thick.

4. Bake at 325 degrees. If you use air pans, the cookies will not brown on the bottom, so keep an eye on them and you’ll come to know the look of baked cookies, especially after you have tested several!

5. When cookies are cool, frost with buttercream frosting: a mix of ¾ stick of butter and 2 pounds confectioners sugar and a tad of milk.

6. We decorate using colored sugar which we make by adding a couple of drops of food coloring to small bowls of granulated sugar.

I hope your cookie making becomes a meditation as well as your cookie eating. Enjoy each precious moment.

Tags: anise seeds, Bavaria, cookie, holiday, recipe, Ruhland, Untergrafenreid, vegetarian, Waldmunchen

This entry was posted by carolyn aka LaughingYogini on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.