Cookie Time: Cardamom Sugar Cookies

This recipe must start off a little something like this:
Meet my new friends, Mort & Pes, they are bringers of tiding of comfort & joy. If you've never smashed stuff in a stone mortar you should come by sometime & try it, it's great fun. All this banging & clanging & nothing shatters. (Except the cardamom seeds, mind you) And if you want to smell something that will literally "blow your nasal cavity to the 7th heaven" you must crush whole cardamom seeds. Doesn't look like much but I'm still reeling. My kids could smell it from the school table & came running. (Not to mention it also sounded like Mommy had finally snapped & was breaking all the dishes in the kitchen)

I found this recipe in a book I got for 100Y at a 2nd hand store called "The Joy of Coffee", (eh-hum, let's not get into that today!) There were a lot of good biscuit & cookie/snackie recipes in the back. I spied cardamom & thought "Great, any excuse to smash stuff with Mort again" So here's how it went. I halved the recipe & used 1/2 brown sugar. The best thing about this recipe is that it was very easy to handle & cut out. The kids had great fun cutting out the stars.

So, it goes a little something like this:

1 3/4 c flour

1 tsp b. soda

1/2 tsp cardamom

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 c butter

1/2 c sugar

4 tbsp honey

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp orange zest

Whisk the dry ingr together in a separate bowl. As usual with cookies, the butter & sugars get beaten together till their light & fluffy. Then add the honey & then the egg & vanilla. Next add the dry to the wet, mix till well blended.

Gather it up & put it on a sheet of clear wrap/saran wrap/cling form...whatever. Flatten out into 1 inch thick disks & chill for at least 1 hr.

Lightly flour wax paper or clean surface & roll out to 1/8 inch thin, cut out w/ cutter. Awww, how can you not just enjoy the look of those.

Place on cookie sheet & bake at 160 (350) for 10-12 min or till golden brown around the edges & raised in the center, move to wire rack immediately & cool. Snitch immediately, if not sooner.

Nummy-num-num. These were good, crispy & cute & not too sugary. The cardamom stood out well enough & orange zest added that little extra grown up flavor that I love. DH was a pretty big fan too.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!

PS. The recipe says that it will keep for 2 weeks in an air tight container, not that it will survive that long. I kept some for about a week & found that they lost that crunch, I wouldn't suggest keeping them too long.