Anise cookies

A dunking cookie from Switzerland

By Kim Carlson

December 17, 2008

Every holiday season, my generous and talented neighbor Cornelia brings over one of the Christmas treats I love the best: A cellophane bag of cookies she’s made, using recipes from her native Switzerland. Some of them are best to eat right away, but some — like this one — are to be savored at the right moment, dunked in hot chocolate or in hot, milky coffee.

This recipe suggests the traditional way of making the cookies: by shaping a crescent and then slashing the outside edge three or four times. The result is a pretty, leafy-looking cookie. Sometimes, though, Cornelia shapes the cookies into a block and presses them with a wooden stamp that was given to her by her mother (see photo).