This recipe is super easy. It makes a tasty, dense cookie like a European biscuit-cookie—perfect to serve with coffee or tea. The fresh vanilla gives the cookies a lovely flecked appearance. For my taste, the cookies could stand to be stronger in vanilla, but vanilla beans are more expensive and I assume they were a precious ingredient in the 1920’s, as well. To shape the cookies, the recipe calls for forming the dough into little dumplings. After I kneaded it, I found it easier to roll the stiff dough, then cut it into slices.

1 cup butter
2 whole eggs
1 cup sugar
3-1/3 cups flour
1/2 vanilla pod or bean (or 1 tsp. vanilla extract)
2 tsp. hartshorn (or baking powder)

Cream butter, then add eggs and slowly add sugar, vanilla and flour. Knead everything together well. Form little dumplings from it. Bake for 10-12 minutes for small wafers (approx. 2 inches across) or 15-20 minutes for larger cookies. Cool the cookies on a wire rack.