PenguinSix’s Anise Christmas Cookie Recipe

This is a family recipe we’ve been using for decades. Every year my kids and their friends gather to make these cookies, which ends in a big sugary chaos.

1 cup of butter
2 cups of sugar
3 eggs
1.5 tsp Cream of Tartar
1.5 tsp of Baking Soda (dissolved in 1 tbl of milk)
1 tsp of Salt
1 tsp of Vanilla
1 Tsp of Anise
3.5 cups of flour (plus maybe 1+ cups during the rolling process (or more!)

Preheat to 175C/350F
1) Use softened butter in sticks. Let it sit out awhile or nuke it 20 seconds (do not melt). Mix the butter and sugar together quite well in a bowl.
2) Add and mix milk/soda, egg, Anise, and vanilla.
3) Add salt, cream of tartar, flour.
Mix the dough so it is mixed and ‘rollable’.
On a floured mat (this is where the .5 cup of flour comes into play), roll the dough, adding additional flour as needed to prevent sticking to the rolling pin. Get the dough to about 1/4 inch thick.
Cut the cookies with cookie cutters or with a knife to make the shapes you want. Re-roll unused dough until you have no more (p.s. I love to eat the dough but it is very sweet).

Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet (nonstick ok) at 400 degree for 6-8 minutes–basically until the bottoms start to turn slight brown. Do not overbake. You can underbake a bit (say 5 minutes in a very hot oven) but make sure you let cookies set a minute or two before trying to remove them from the pan (or they may break up).

Use store-bought frosting (I used Duncan Hines–worked fine) to cover them and then colored sugars to decorate. The frosting helps soften up the cookie a bit should it get a tad hard from baking.

Store in a ziploc bag to keep the freshness as they do harden quickly.


Half Batch

.5 cup of butter
1 cups of sugar
1.5 eggs / 2 eggs.
.75 tsp Cream of Tartar
.75 tsp of Baking Soda (dissolved in .5 tbl of milk)
.5 tsp of Salt .5 tsp of Vanilla
.5Tsp of Anise
1.75 cups of flour (plus maybe .5 cups during the rolling process)