If a chewy, spicy cookie isyour favorite kind of cookie, this old-fashioned hermits recipe is sure to be a keeper.Made with a flavorful combination of molasses, raisins, and spices such ascinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves, hermitsare especially nice during the holiday season, but I love them year-round. They keep well, can be sweetened with a custom glaze (vanilla, rum, lemon, orange—you name it), and have a mellow sweetness that’s hard to resist.This traditional hermits recipe calls for raisins, but you can easily swap them out forgolden raisins, dried cranberries, dried currants, or a combination of two or three.
Similar to biscotti, traditional hermits are made by baking a long “log” of dough that is then cut into bars. This gives classic hermits their chewy centers and crisp edges. If you prefer, however, you can make hermit barsin a square pan, yieldinga hermit that looks more like a brownie, or softhermit cookiesin the more familiar “drop” style.
No matter the shape a hermit takes, I’ve never met oneI didn’t like.But I must confess the traditional crisp-edge, chewy-center hermit bars aremy favorite. They’re perfect for dunking into coffee or hot chocolate, and their ability to keep well makes them a great choice for Christmas cookie swaps or holiday care packages.
Make a batch this weekend and find out why this old-fashioned hermits recipe is Yankee-approved.This post was first published in 2017 and has been updated.
Aimee Tucker is Yankee Magazine’s Home Editor and the Senior Digital Editor of NewEngland.com. A lifelong New Englander and Yankee contributor since 2010, Aimee has written columns devoted to history, foliage, retro food, and architecture, and regularly shares her experiences in New England travel, home, and gardening. Her most memorable Yankee experiences to date include meeting Stephen King, singing along to a James Taylor Fourth of July concert at Tanglewood, and taking to the skies in the Hood blimp for an open-air tour of the Massachusetts coastline.
Flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves and filled with dried fruit like raisins or dates, they get crunch from the classic chopped walnuts, but pecans, almonds, or pistachios are also a great substitution.
The common ingredients seemingly spices, raisins or dates, nuts. Some like hermits iced or frosted, others skip it. They are simple to make. The chewy, nuttiness along with warm flavors like cinnamon, allspice, and cloves strike a nice balance.
From Maine to Massachusetts, the hermit was a favorite offering in pantries and bakeshops by the early 20th centuries. Fannie Farmer included a hermit with mace, cloves, raisins, and cinnamon in her cookbooks, but the cookie became a staple in recipe collections published by community groups.
National Spicy Hermit Cookie Day celebrates a cookie flavor reminiscent of autumn spices. Recognized on November 15th, this time of year is ideal for baking up a batch of these delicious cookies.
Etymology. The word hermit comes from the Latin ĕrēmīta, the latinisation of the Greek ἐρημίτης (erēmitēs), "of the desert", which in turn comes from ἔρημος (erēmos), signifying "desert", "uninhabited", hence "desert-dweller"; adjective: "eremitic".
They really are fantastic. Basically, for Laura Bush's Famous Cowboy Cookes you take traditional chocolate chip cookie dough and stuff it with oats, coconut, pecans and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Resulting in these oh-so-chewy, flavorful and delicious cookies!
Hermits are often seen as a bad thing to shallow and insecure people. They fear that they might be unpleasant to be around and seeing someone that prefers their own company scares them.
These people became hermits, living alone, often in wild or deserted places, in a cave or hut they had built. They ate only the food they could grow themselves or what they were given as gifts, and spent their days praying or thinking about God's ways.
Pizzelles are believed to be the oldest cookie in history, first made in the 8th century in south-central Italy. The traditional pizzelle cookie is made from a sugar/butter-based batter that is pressed between two hot irons, usually sporting a design.
It wasn't until very recently, around 1938, that chocolate chip cookies were first invented. Unlike a lot of other things, the chocolate chip cookie was not invented by accident. During the 1930s, a chef named Ruth Graves Wakefield decided to give something different to her customers.
Cookies appear to have their origins in 7th century AD Persia, shortly after the use of sugar became relatively common in the region. They spread to Europe through the Muslim conquest of Spain.
National Cookie Month is an annual designation observed in October. That's right, this month you can start prepping your metabolism for the holiday season by indulging in cookies of any kind, whenever you please.
There are cookie holidays and then there is National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day. Each year on March 18th, this holiday celebrates a delicate cookie made from oats.
These lemon shortbread cookies dusted with powdered sugar had a decent run from 2011 to 2019. The cookie was named after Savannah, Georgia -- the city where Girl Scouts began and founder Juliette Gordon Low was born.
Introduction: My name is Lidia Grady, I am a thankful, fine, glamorous, lucky, lively, pleasant, shiny person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
We notice you're using an ad blocker
Without advertising income, we can't keep making this site awesome for you.
