Sesame Seed Cookies

This is the last of the four traditional cookies made for Christmas and other special events throughout the year, such as weddings, graduations, etc. The other three have already been posted: Italian White; Fig; and Chocolate Spice Balls. This recipe makes a lot of cookies. I have never counted them, but they fill the top of a large dining room table. You may want to try making half a recipe to see if that is enough to meet your needs.

Ingredients:
5 lb. flour
2 lb. sugar
1 lb. Crisco
2 lb. lard
6 tblsp. baking powder
2 tsp. real vanilla extract
12 large eggs
Sesame seeds (a couple pounds)

Cut Crisco and lard into dry ingredients. In a separate bowl beat eggs and vanilla together, then add to the dry ingredients mixture. Mix with your hands to make a nice dough. Add a little milk if needed to make the dough go together.

To form cookies, pinch off a piece of dough and roll into a rope the width of a finger, about 1" wide. Roll the rope into the sesame seeds (see "how to prepare the sesame seeds" below). Cut into 2" pieces on the slant. Bake on lightly greased cookie sheets at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes until the bottoms are a nice tan color.

Preparing the sesame seeds: In a small bowl or pan pour some milk -- maybe one or two cups. Place the sesame seeds into the milk and add a little sugar -- about 1 tblsp. or so. When ready to roll cookies into the sesame seeds, drain some of the seeds through a small-holed sieve. Dump the damp seeds onto the table and roll each rope of dough into the seeds until thorougly covered. Drain and dump more seeds onto the table as needed.

Aunt Mil stressed that these cookies, when cool, must not be stored in plastic bags because the seeds will fall off. She used to store them in single layers in a large roasting pan with tin foil or wax paper in between each layer, but you can also store them in single layers in air tight plastic containers or tins. Aunt Mil only used a plastic baggie when making up boxes of cookies for gift-giving, because if the sesame seed cookies are left uncovered amid other cookies, they get soggy. However, they are usually eaten so quickly that bagging them is not really necessary.