I would like to thank all the bees who made this delicious honey cookie possible. Because this fragrant, crisp, flavor-filled, soft-in-the-middle, simple yet delicious little honey cookie is the bee’s knees!
Your Family Will Love These Heavenly Honey Crisps Because …
My youngest is still in a highchair and every morning since I baked a test batch of these from frozen the other day, these Honey Cookies are all he wants for breakfast. I ask him, “Dylan, what do you want for breakfast,” and all I get is “nummie cookies.” And since I speak his language, I know that, by that, he means “yummy honey cookies,” which he cutely demands while banging his little silicone spoon on his highchair tray.
And Honey Cookies are not only delicious, soft-in-the-center, crispy-at-the-edges little discs of honey wonder, they are also very kid-friendly. They’re a very portable, non-crumbly cookie that transports well in lunchboxes, snack sacks, or in your own lunch tote for a snack at work or for a lunch-dessert, as I call it. The way I see it, every meal should have its own little dessert. A sweet at the end of a savory breakfast – well that’s breakfast dessert!
My girls love these like I love a good bacon cheeseburger with french fries and Southern mac and cheese – swoon. They say they taste so much like honey that Winnie-the-Pooh called and wants a dozen of them, like right now! We have a ball making them together because there are only three steps. So I prep them in stages, separating wet from dry ingredients into glass containers, so the girls can feel like they’re really cooking all by themselves without the “boring measuring parts,” as they call them.
On Baking With Honey
There are different kinds of honey, each with its own nutritious constituents depending upon what grasses, flowers, or even bushes the bees collect their nectar from. Clover honey comes from bees collecting nectar from fields full of clover. Mānuka honey, interestingly enough, comes from bees that collect nectar from tea tree bushes, growing wild in Australia and New Zealand. This means, Mānuka honey is packed with very good-for-you nutrients like antioxidants and phytonutrients, which help us to fight off viruses and bacterial infections (so important with kids who play everywhere and touch everything).
Baking with both honey and sugar means that this cookie dough will be a bit sticky, and that this dough will spread fast when baked. So you want to take some steps to ensure both the integrity and deliciousness of your cookie’s flavor and texture.
With this special recipe, passed down through generations of women in my family, cornstarch and baking soda are working in a delicate balance with flour to give this dough its crispness. You don’t want to throw that balance off with these cookies trying to fight that stickiness with flour. Embrace the stickiness, rather, and instead of flouring hands or surfaces, keep your leavening agents in ratio by portioning these out with a small scoop you rinse in a bowl of warm water.
For best results, keep them small and chill them right on the tray in the freezer for, say, 15 minutes, enough to get the dough cold, so they’ll bake evenly without melting into misshapen abstract art shapes. Chilling that dough helps ensure that butter, honey, and sugar can do all their magic in these dreamy, buttery Honey Cookies!!
How to Make Ahead and Store?
You can keep this dough in the refrigerator for five days. You can freeze the dough for one month and even bake these frozen if you store them in balls. If you do bake from frozen, then increase your cooking time by three minutes and watch them. Cookies behave differently when still frozen. You can freeze baked honey cookies two months tops. I recommend freezing them un-iced.
Serving Suggestions
These cookies are great after virtually any meal and wonderful for a lunch-dessert, especially after a sandwich I know of with exponential kid-appeal, my Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Some Apple Racecars on the side are a fun way to get some nutritious fruit in their day, too.
Honey Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
- 1 large egg room temperature
- 1/3 cup honey
- 2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup turbinado sugar optional, for garnish
Instructions
- Mix dry ingredients: In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Set aside.
- Cream butter and sugar: In a large bowl, beat the butter and granulated sugar until creamy, about 1-2 minutes. Scrape the sides as needed.
- Add wet ingredients: To the creamed mixture, add the egg, honey, and vanilla extract. Beat until just combined.
- Combine with dry ingredients: Gradually mix in the dry ingredients until just incorporated. Avoid overmixing.
- Chill the dough: Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or overnight.
- Prepare for baking: Preheat the oven to 350°F and line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Shape cookies: Scoop the dough into balls and optionally roll in turbinado sugar. Place on the baking sheet, spaced apart.
- Bake: Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes for larger cookies, or 7-9 minutes for smaller ones, until golden brown.
- Cool: Let cookies cool on the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
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