A New Mexican Cookie

My Mother used to bake a sugar-like cookie with a faint taste of licorice and cinnamon.  She called the cookie a biscochito.  I used like dipping the semi-hard cookie in milk.  For Christmas I have tried making biscochitos but they seldom turn out being either too hard or without the special taste I remember. I have looked on the Internet for recipes but most seem too complicated for me.   I tried to get recipes  from friends and hear things like, "you have got to use lard and not shortening, look on the Internet, it's how you mix the ingredients, and so on.

In April I will be presenting Bless Me, Ultima at our book club and would like to have Biscochitos representing a bit of New Mexican culture. This morning I decided to bake some of the New Mexican cookies and if they turn out I will bake a new batch for the book club. Following is the Biscochito recipe taken from the Internet and cut in half. I picked the easiest recipe I could find!

Biscochitos

3 cups flour
1/8 t salt
1/2 t baking powder
1 c shortening   (my Mother used lard)                                                                                                      
2/3 c sugar
1 t anise (I only had extract but seeds work better)
1 egg

1/8 t. sugar
1/2 t. cinnamon

Sift flour, baking powder and salt.  Cream shortening, sugar and anise until fluffy.  Beat in egg.
Mix in flour until well blended.  Turn dough onto a floured board.  Roll 1/4 -1/2 inches thick. Dust
with sugar and cinnamon.  Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

Dry Ingredients

Creaming shortening, sugar, anise and egg.

The dry ingredients reminded me of mountain tops with white fluffy snow. When I creamed the remaining ingredients it looked like vanilla icing or mashed potatoes.  The hard part was combining the dry with the wet and trying to get a ball of dough.  Mine looked more like pebbles on a sandy beach. I added a small amount of water until I was able to form a mound of dough.

I made smaller balls of dough and rolled them out on a floured board. I used a juice glass to cut the cookies and placed them on a cookie sheet. I sprinkled the tops of the cookies with cinnamon and sugar and placed them in 350 degree pre-heated oven.

Ready to go into oven.

I am not sure if the recipe is wrong or if my oven doesn't heat up enough but after twenty-five minutes I took the cookies out.  They did not look brown but seemed done.  The second sheet to go into the oven I put the oven to 375 degrees and the cookies were done after fifteen minutes.

Care for a Biscochito?