Poppy Seed Cookies

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Crisp, sweeet poppy seed taste. These will become a holiday favorite.

Ease: involved Type: dessert, snack Prep Time: over an hour including dough chilling time. Yield: about 24 cookies

Cook's notes

The raw dough may be refrigerated for several hours before rolling and baking. You may also freeze the dough and thaw it just before you are ready to roll and bake. If you were pressed for time, for example before a party, you could even roll and cut the dough several weeks or days in advance. You would need to freeze the cookies on a cookie sheet. Once they were frozen solid, you could move them to an airtight container. When you are ready to bake, place the frozen dough cookies onto an oiled or non-stick cookie sheet. Thaw and bake.

In order to save time, I highly recommend the use of large, cookie cutters with smooth shapes. For example, stars, pumpkins, snowmen, even letters if they are large enough. If you want to cut the dough into shapes with small parts, for example dogs' legs, elephant trunks or dinosaur tails and necks, it will take you much longer because the small parts can break off easily. So don't choose cookie cutters with small arms, necks or other parts unless you have the time and inclination to perform constructive surgery on most of the cookies.

Instead of grating the zest off of a lemon, I get dried lemon peel in granulated form. It saves me a huge amount of time. You can get it at natural food stores or at Frontier Co-op

I like to use the organic blackstrap molasses made by Wholesome Sweeteners. It has loads of minerals, no chemicals, and is a bit sweeter than other molasses.

Ingredients

2 extra large eggs
6 T canola or safflower oil
1/2 c date sugar
1 T organic molasses
1 t vanilla
1/2 t lemon zest
2 c less 2 T whole wheat pastry flour
2 t baking powder
1/3 c poppy seeds

Steps

• Beat the eggs and oil for 5 minutes in a large mixing bowl. Start at a low speed, working up to the highest speed on your mixer. Most of the mixing time should be on high. Add date sugar, molasses, vanilla and lemon rind. Beat well.
• In a separate bowl, mix together baking powder, poppy seeds and flour.
• Add the flour mixture to the egg/oil mixture. Mix by hand until completely blended. Wrap the dough and refrigerate. the colder the dough, the easier it will be to roll.
• Preheat oven to 375° convection or regular oven. Lightly flour a clean dry surface and your rolling pin. Roll the dough to 1/4" thickness. Don't roll too thin. Cut into shapes and bake for 10 minutes or until brown around the edges.

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