One Hundred And One Things

What are pierniczki? Little Polish spiced biscuits. How do you make them? Like this:

Ingredients

1 Kg Strong Canadian White Flour
400 gms Honey (1 Jar)
3 Large Eggs
8 oz Sugar (granulated white)
2 heaped tsp Bicarb Soda
1 heaped tsp Ginger
1 heaped tsp Mixed Spice
8 oz Butter (soft) or Olivio

Method

• Sieve the flour onto board and make a well
• Add boiling honey
• Mix with blade of knife.
• Add sugar
• Add butter. When warm to touch,
• Add eggs & soda with flour
• Add small quantity of flour to spices and mix
• Add spices to mixture
• Knead for 10 mins; cut to see if holes/bubbles in dough – if no, knead more
• Roll out to 1cm thickness
• Cut out and lay on a buttered baking tray – leave lot of room round each
• Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees C
• Bake for 12/15 mins approx
• Cool
• Eat

That's the recipe as I received it from my father-in-law, who is half Polish and should know these things. Some notes:

- I don't know why the flour has to be Canadian. Anyway, I used British.
- Yes, it really does mean boiling honey. We phoned to check. Honey boils at more or less the same temperature as water, and froths up in a most fascinating manner.
- It's much easier to get honey out of the jar if you stand it in a pan of hot water first - makes it go all runny.
- Boiling honey is very runny indeed, but if you work quickly you can keep it from running out of the flour, across the board and all over the table and floor.
- A heart-shaped cutter appears to be traditional.
- Mostly, they rise upwards rather than outwards. About 5/8" space between them is sufficient.
- These quantities make... rather a lot. I gave up after the third baking sheet and froze the rest of the mixture (we'll see if that works or not). As it was, there are at least thirty-five pierniczki in the biscuit tin.

I was going to take them to the choir party, but it's been postponed. Never mind - I'm sure my colleagues will appreciate them!