Stimac’s Croatian Honey Cookies

There truly is nothing like honey and spice cookies during a cold day. If I could put Christmas spirit into a cookie, it would taste like the honey cookies my family makes each year. 

These honey cookies are adapted from a recipe by a blog when I started making them a few years ago in an attempt to connect with my Croatian heritage. Ever since then, they have become an absolute necessity to have in my house during the holidays.

I think this recipe’s biggest strength is that all of the spices and ingredients needed are common household staples. While making the cookies requires a bit more than a pan and one bowl, it’s still a relatively easy recipe to execute.

Both of my parents immigrated to the United States at a young age, each trying their hardest to become devoid of the cultures that were carried with them. My dad immigrated from a war-torn Croatia, Yugoslavia at the time, and my mom moved all across the world, Nigeria to Canada to France, following her dad’s engineering job. 

These cookies are a recipe from my dad’s side of my heritage, and I have had to resort to Google to find the right recipes. The blog I used was about exploring the Balkans, so I’ve made a few adjustments, such as generally resorting to eyeballing the spices, but using measuring spoons is fine too. The honey specifically is very subtle and easy to overpower, so careful measurement is needed. The cookies on their own are fantastic, but also you can add a topping to make them even better. I like to use plain powdered sugar, add a bit of milk, and create a glaze to put on top. One warning however, when it comes to making powdered sugar glaze, a little bit of milk goes a very long way.I know the amount of powdered sugar makes it look like it needs a lot of milk. It does not. Start small with just a splash of milk, stir it, and use whatever utensil you’re using to test the consistency. 

These honey cookies have such a warm and welcoming tasting, perfect during this season.  The spices and the honey come together wonderfully, and it’s my favorite thing to make over the holidays for friends, family and more.,

Something to note about these cookies is that they will never, and I mean never, give you the gratification of knowing that they are done. The cookies will get lighter instead of darker when baking in the oven, so I always need to break one open on the sheet to see if they are done. 

Ingredients

• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½  cup butter
• ½  cup honey
• 2 eggs
• ⅓  tsp cloves
• ½  tsp ground ginger
• ½  tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 ¾  cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350 F
• Melt the butter in a saucepan on low heat. Once the butter is fully melted, add in the honey and use a whisk to fully combine it. At first, the honey and butter won’t want to combine, but just keep at it.
• In a separate bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients; the flour, spices, and baking soda
• In a big bowl, add the eggs and sugar together and combine, and then add the honey and butter mixture. 
• Into the bowl of wet ingredients, add the dry and combine. 
• Line a baking tray with parchment, and measure out a rounded tablespoon of dough until you fill out the sheet with rows of 3s and 2s.
• Put the tray in the oven and bake for 8-13 minutes, until they are a pale brown. Wait about two minutes, and then put the cookies onto a cooling rack or another plate. You don’t want the bottoms of the cookies to continue baking while the rest isn’t.

Optional

• Either dust with powdered sugar, or create a glaze. Use about an eighth of a cup to a quarter of powdered sugar with a bit of milk and mix it until it is the correct consistency for drizzling.
• Drizzle on top of the cookies.