Medieval Cookies from a Modern Oven

On Friday, a good 800 years after Hildegard von Bingen left the recipe, my son and I made her famous Cookies of Joy, as they are frequently called in modern writing.  True, she may have used the word biscuits, or small cakes.  Regardless, we made them in our very modern electric oven.

I rarely bake--as in, just about never--but my son mixed all the ingredients while I wrote about Lewis and Clark, and then I glopped the very sticky batter on a cookie sheet.  We were a little short on flour, which is why we had something more like batter than dough.  I thought, as I put them into the oven, that I really should have taken the time to run to the store for more flour.

However, after ten minutes of cooking time, they were done, not looking as beautiful as store-bought or baker-made cookies.  But I thought they were delicious!  They tasted almost like gingerbread.  My daughter thought they were merely okay.  So there are the mixed reviews.

Did they make us joyful?  Well, we had fun making them!  We had fun eating them!  I fully expect I'll be making them again.  And if you want some cookie-baking and cookie-eating music, Hildegard has also left us that!