• Recipes
  • Equipment Reviews
  • Taste Tests
  • How to Cook
  • Videos

Hermit Cookies

From

October/November 2008

Hermit Cookies

Most recipes for Hermit Cookies we tested involved creaming the butter, but this produced dry, biscuitlike cookies. Melting the butter delivered a chewier, moister cookie. We took melting one step further by cooking the butter in a saucepan until light brown and fragrant, which added a nutty flavor to the hermits.

Tasters settled on the simple, yet potent, combination of cinnamon, allspice, and ginger. Adding these spices to the browned butter bloomed their natural flavor, which allowed us to use less. This avoided a dusty texture from too much ground spice. We steeped the raisins in melted butter to soften them, and pureed them with crystallized ginger into a rough paste. This helped distribute raisin flavor into every bite, while the pureed ginger lent pungent sweetness and chew.

When it came to shaping them, we found that hermits baked in logs and then sliced were much chewier and moister.

Makes about 1 1/2 dozen cookies

Crystallized (or candied) ginger is available in the spice aisle of most supermarkets. For this recipe, we prefer using mild (or light) molasses instead of the robust or blackstrap varieties; see page 30 for more information about molasses.

Ingredients

The recipe you requested is for
Members Only.

Start Your 14-Day Free Trial Membership

Every Recipe. Every Rating. Every Video from
Every Magazine & Every Episode!
  • 8 years of Cook’s Country Foolproof Recipes
  • Complete Cook’s Country TV Video Library
  • 2,900+ Equipment Ratings and Ingredient Taste Tests
  • Step-by-Step Technique Photos
  • Save Favorites, Create Menus, Print Shopping Lists
How we use your e-mail address
Christopher Kimball, Founder and Publisher

Dear Home Cook,

If I were new to CooksCountry.com, I might think, "It's easy to get free recipes on the Internet. What makes your recipes different?" Well, unlike recipes from blogs, message boards, and other recipe sites, our recipes are exhaustively tested by our team of full-time test cooks until they offer consistently great results. That means fried chicken with a crunchy coating and moist meat, a low-fat recipe makeover for macaroni and cheese that’s as creamy and cheesy as the full-fat version, and fork-tender slow cooker pot roast.

We're obsessive in our quest to find and foolproof the best of American home cooking, from fuss-free weeknight dinners, to updated, simplified versions of regional specialties, to slow cooker and make ahead meals. CooksCountry.com is the only place you can find every foolproof recipe published in Cook’s Country magazine since 2005, plus objective ratings and test results from both Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated for cookware and supermarket ingredients.

Let me make a simple, no-nonsense offer. Try out our website FREE for a 14-Day, No-Hassle Trial Offer. I’m pretty confident that CooksCountry.com will quickly become an invaluable resource for everything from a quick Tuesday supper to your next get-together with family and friends.

Thanks for your consideration,

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball
Founder and Publisher

How we use your e-mail address
Related Content
© 2013 America’s Test Kitchen. All rights reserved.