This recipe comes to me from my Grandmother. One of a long line of Irish women who had married Irish men, Grandma thought outside the envelope and fell in love with a German. This was Grandpa’s favorite Christmas cookie. My mother carried on the cookie tradition. She would start in September and make thousands of Peppernuts, using bags of cookies instead of styrofoam peanuts for packing in Christmas boxes sent to relatives. I remember the first year that I could not go home for Christmas, opening up the box from Mama and smelling these wonderful, spicy cookies.

Many people roll the cookies in powdered sugar before baking, but we never did. Towards her later years, Mama stopped rolling them all together, and baked the slices straight from the roll. The cookies rather resembled dog chow, but they tasted just the same.

Note: This dough is very, very stiff, even before chilling. It’s helpful to have a heavy-duty mixer.

The recipe card that I have, copied from Grandma’s, is titled Basic Peppernut Recipe.

5-1/2 Cups flour
1 Cup shortening (butter or margarine)
1 Cup sugar
2 eggs well beaten
1/2 Cup light corn syrup
1/2 Cup molasses
1/3 Cup cream
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
3 tsp anise seed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Cream shortening and sugar. Add beaten eggs and cream to creamed shortening sand sugar. Sift flour and spices, soda, and salt together. Alternate additions of flour mix, corn syrup and molasses. Roll into long, slender rolls (about 1/2″ thick) in waxed paper. Chill until firm. Cut into small slices and roll into balls. Bake at 400 until brown (not very long).