Jumballs

Best historical cookie recipe yet!

The ladies at Cooking in the Archives can be thanked for this excellent recipe as well. They came out with a slightly different interpretation of the recipe than I did, but only in the amount of spices used, so I don't imagine our two takes will have turned out very different.

Here's my take on Lady Chanworth's jumballs:
227g sugar
341g flour
1 Tbsp. caraway seeds
1/2 tsp. coriander seeds
1 c. butter, melted
1 Tbsp. rosewater
2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
57g blanched almonds, ground

I combined the sugar, flour, caraway seeds, and coriander seeds first. Then I poured in the melted butter and rosewater and gave it a stir to incorporate the liquids. I added both egg yolks at once and by the time I'd incorporated those, had a nice, somewhat crumbly shortbread dough. I was unsure whether or not I'd be able to work the ground almonds in. They disappeared into the dough just fine though!

I chose to mimic the shaping approach taken in Cooking in the Archives and rolled my dough out into a long log and sliced it into cookies from there. I ended up with four and a half dozen wonderfully buttery and tasty cookies!

These are lovely little shortbreads and I'll definitely be making them again! I really like this recipe, but I think it'd be interesting to try a few of the many other versions of these cookies just to see how they turn out. Maybe I'll be able to find some time to try one next weekend!