In the past few weeks I have had the good fortune to eat several meals at the home of my friends Pain Perdu and The Rocket Scientist. They are wonderful cooks and they also select great cheeses, even if they can't always remember which cheeses they are. TRS is a New Mexico native, and one of the meals was a special New Mexican Shabbat lunch, which included her adapted recipe for kosher or vegan biscochitos, or little biscuit-shaped cookies. What follows is the recipe with her comments.
Kosher Biscochitos
Adapted from allrecipes.com Biscochitos 1
6 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups shortening (use veggie shortening, or even butter, or half and half)
1 1/2 cups white sugar
4 teaspoons anise seed (original recipe had 2)
2 eggs
1/4 cup brandy (can use slivovitz!)
1/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C)
2. Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Cream shortening with sugar and anise seeds until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Mix in flour and brandy until well blended.
3. Turn dough out on a floured board and pat or roll to 1/4 or 1/2 inch thickness. Cut into shapes (the fleur-de-lys is traditional). Dust with a mixture of 1/4 cup sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon.
4. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.
Notes:
I cut to ~3/8 or 1/2 inch thick, and cook time was ~23 min with vegetable shortening.
Dough did not hold together that well -- I had to roll it out in chunks, wetting my hands to get it to a rollable consistency. Another version of this recipe on allrecipes uses 1/2 cup wine, so that might work better.
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