Belgian Iron Cookies

SUBMITTED BY: Linda Housner PHOTO BY: sarah k

"These have been in the family forever. They last forever - they mellow like fine wine. You must have a special iron to bake them over a gas burner. It's like two hinged plates and it usually has a pretty pattern that is pressed into the cookies as they bake one by one."

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Original recipe yield 10 dozen

SERVINGS

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Servings
USMETRIC

INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)

5 pounds all-purpose flour
4 1/2 cups brown sugar
12 eggs
2 cups butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons whiskey

DIRECTIONS

Cream butter and brown sugar. Add eggs, vanilla, salt, and liquor (if desired). Blend in.
Now it gets to be fun. You have to work in all five pounds of flour little by little by hand. It will work in but it takes a while. You'll wind up with a BIG mixing bowl of dough.
Refrigerate dough overnight.
Have plenty of people to help with the cooking. Lightly grease and heat the empty cookie iron over a gas burner. Start with a tablespoon and a half of dough rolled into a little "cigar" shape and vary amount to fit the size of your cookie iron. It takes from one to one and a half minutes to cook each cookie - it's a trial and error process at first till you get a handle on the temperature of the gas burner and the heat retaining capabilities of your iron. A properly cooked cookie will be golden and after cooled, crisp.
This a family holiday tradition for us and we spend a whole day cooking cookies with lots of testing to make sure they're as good as last year's. The cast iron cookie irons work best, but I have seen people make them with the aluminum pizelle "irons". Ask for a krumkokie (croom cockie) iron at a gourmet cooking shop. We put them in tins and store till next Christmas, eating last year's cookies.