biscochitos

Mmmm, to smell these baking this afternoon - it smelled of Christmas!
There are only about a million and a half different recipes for the official state cookie of New Mexico, and I wasn't sure which one to try, but when I found this one, with so few ingredients (that all happened to be in my pantry), I knew this was it. Luckily I struck gold with this recipe. :-)

I tweaked it a bit, and my tweaks are reflected below.

6 C flour
2 T baking powder
1 t salt
2 sticks plus 1 T unsalted butter
1 C crisco
3/4 C sugar
1 T cinnamon
3/4 C water
2 T anise seed
cinnamon sugar

Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. Set aside. Cream butter ands crisco until fluffy, then add sugar and cinnamon. Continue beating until smooth. Add the flour mixture and water mixture slowly, alternating between the two, and at some point add the anise. This is a very dry, dense dough that had my standard kitchenaid mixer rocking a bit - be aware. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface (in several batches) to desired thickness. I got mine less that "1/4 but more than "1/8. Cut in desired shapes. I opted for triangles, and used my pizza cutter. :-) Bake at 400' for 10 minutes (that worked at elevation 910 feet). While still hot, coat cookies in cinnamon sugar (I used a pie pan and was very generous with this step, making sure to coat the bottoms of each cookie as well as the tops). Enjoy.

With the size I made my cookies, I got about 15 dozen. And, it's quite possible the cookies would bake nicely at 375' or even 350' - I didn't feel like experimenting that much today, but some of my bottoms are darker than I like.

The original recipe came from my Grandma Marg's recipe collection - a booklet put out by the Agricultural Extension Service of NMSU, Favorite Cookies from New Mexico Kitchens dated January, 1961. And they spell cookie "cooky."