BOERE SOETKOEK

Wheat flour 840 g
Sugar 500 g
Baking powder 3 g
Ginger, powdered 6 g
Cinnamon 4 g
Cloves 2 g
Salt 3 g
Butter 238 g
Pork fat, this includes butter
and pork lard 300 g
Eggs 2 units
Milk, to add to dough for consistency As needed

  1. Sift all the dry ingredients together.
  2. Combine the butter and pork fat with the dry ingredients (best done using your hands).
  3. Beat the eggs and add to the dough, then add some milk until you have a stiff but workable dough.
  4. Wrap the dough in a damp cloth and leave for anything between half an hour to overnight.
  5. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
  6. Roll out the dough and use cookie cutters to cut out the cookies.
  7. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes.Cookies will be slightly soft straight out of the oven but harden once they cool down.

YIELD 60 COOKIES
PREPARATION TIME 20 MINUTES
TOTAL TIME 32 MINUTES + WAITING TIME

This recipe is in my grandmother’s recipe book. It is a newspaper clipping, under the title: Oupa het daaraan gesmul, Kleinboet sal ook( Oupa tucked in, Kleinboet will too). It was one of a few so-called Voortrekker recipes, like curried fish (ingelegde vis) and rusks (beskuit). We used to prepare the dough the evening before we baked the cookies (to eat during the December holidays). The rolling out of the dough and baking the whole batch was a time-consuming activity—but, as the saying goes: vele hande maak ligte werk (many hands make light work).

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