PEPPERNUTS - German cookie but our spelling

CHRISTMAS TRADITION: I was given this recipe in 1965 and it has been made every year since. My 4 children grew up with it every December. You make it after Thanksgiving and whenever you use the oven in December you get out the cookie sheet (saving on electricity or gas) & your dough from the refrigerator, bake a few to keep the bowl full till Christmas. Place the bowl where everyone can grab a handful as they go by and eat them like a handful of nuts. The original recipe was double (14 cups flour) the amount I am giving you. I found by making 1/2 the recipe I could make it in my Electric Mixer large bowl, using the dough hooks, it sure beat doing it by hand!! Of course I still had to make it twice (the full recipe) to keep that bowl full till Christmas.

1 cup sugar, granulated
1 cup butter (I mean BUTTER not that other stuff)
1 cup honey
1 cup Dark Syrup
1/4 cup sour cream
1/8 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp. soda
1/8 tsp. Allspice
1/4 tsp cloves, ground
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. Oil of Anise, flavoring
pinch of salt
7 cups of all purpose flour, 1 cup at a time

Cream your butter and sugar together in the mixing bowl with beaters. Then put in the dough hooks and add all the rest of the ingredients mixing well. If you do not have dough hooks for your mixer you have to stir it all together by hand. It gets really tough the last couple cups of flour. It's a very stiff dough. But it must be to make the crispy, hard, delicious, tiny cookies.
Put the dough into a large bowl with lid in the refrigerator (where you will keep it) overnight before using. Very lightly dust your hands with flour and rub across the counter where you will roll the cookie dough. Too much flour will not let it roll gently under your fingers. Take out 1 heaping Tablespoon of dough and rubbing hands together start the dough into a rope but to get it the size of a lead pencil put down on counter and using your fingers rolling along making the rope get longer and smaller. With a sharp knife cut the rope into little pieces approx. 1/2 inch long. Lay on a heavy greased baking pan about 1/2 inch apart. It may take a few times doing it to get the cookies the right size that they are not soft inside. You want them hard all the way through so they are crunchy like a nut. Don't be surprised if you have 100 on your cookie sheet. I use my old heavy thick aluminum grill pan that came with the oven years ago so mine will bake and be the same color top and bottom. Bake (depending on oven) 325 to 350 degrees 13 to 14 minutes on the rack at center of oven. Do not wait till they look brown in oven or they are too brown. Take out when the color has turned a little browner but not brown. Experiment - you will get on to it after doing several pans full. If baking several pans at once I usually set my pan out in the cold a few minutes to cool between batches. You can be rolling & cutting while it cools. In December it should be cold enough to cool it down pretty fast. Good luck. It may sound like alot of trouble but it really gets to be fun and I look forward to it once a year. Keeping the dough in the refrigerator and just baking a sheet or so once in awhile. SLIDE SHOW IS NOT MINE