Honey Drop Cookies

Wedding Cake Murder

Yield: 8 to 10 dozen, depending on the size of your dough balls, tasty, honey-infused, and delicious cookies.

## Ingredients

* 1 and 1/2 cups melted butter ***(3 sticks, 12 ounces, 3/4 pound)***
* 2 cups white ***(granulated)*** sugar
* 1/2 cup honey ***(I used orange blossom honey)***
* 2 beaten eggs ***(just whip them up in a glass with a fork)***
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg ***(freshly ground is best)***
* 1/4 teaspoon cardamom ***(if you don't have it, you can substitute more cinnamon for the cardamom)***
* 4 cups flour ***(don't sift it--pack it down in the cup when you measure it)***

* 1/2 cup white sugar in a small bowl for rolling the dough balls

## Directions

* DO NOT pre-heat the oven yet. This dough must chill before baking.
* Melt the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl. Heat it on HIGH for 1 minute. Leave the bowl in the microwave for another minute and then check the butter after to see it's melted. If it's not, give it more time, in 20-second increments, until it is.
* Take the bowl out of the microwave and mix in the white sugar. Mix until ti's all combined.
* Add the honey to the bowl and mix it in. Mix until it's thoroughly incorporated.
* Let the butter, sugar, and honey mixture sit on the counter while you get out of the eggs.
* When the mixture in the bowl is not so hot it'll cook the eggs, add them to the large bowl and stir them in thoroughly. Be sure to mix until they're well combined.

**Hannah's 1st Note: Lisa and I use a stand mixer to mix up this cookie dough down at The Cookie Jar. You can do it by hand at home, but using an electric mixer makes it a lot easier.**

* Sprinkle in the baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. Mix until all of the ingredients are well combined.
* Add the flour in one-cup increments, mixing after each addition.

**Hannah's 2nd Note: You don't have to be painstakingly precise when you add the four cups of flour. No one's going to know if one cup is a little bigger than the next one. Just make sure you mix after each addition of flour.**

* The dough will be quite stiff after you add the flour. This is exactly as it should be.
* Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least two hours. ***(Overnight is even better.)***
* When you're ready to bake, take the cookie dough out of the refrigerator and let it sit, still covered with the plastic wrap, on your kitchen counter. It will need to warm just a bit so that you can work with it.
* Preheat your oven to 350°F rack in the middle position.
* While your oven is heating to the proper temperature, prepare your cookie sheets. You can either spray them with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray, or line them with parchment paper. ***(The parchment paper is more expensive, but easier in the long run. If you use it, you can simply pull the paper over to the wire cooling rack, cookies and all.)***
* Prepare a shallow bowl by filling it with a half cup of white sugar. This is what you'll use as a coating for the cookie dough balls you'll roll.
* Take off the plastic wrap and roll the cookie dough into walnut-sized balls with your impeccably clean hands. Roll each dough ball in the bowl with the white sugar, one ball at a time, and place it on your prepared cookie sheet, 12 dough balls to a standard-sized sheet.
* Press the dough balls down just a little so they won't roll off when you carry them to the oven.

**Hannah's 3rd Note: If you form the dough into smaller dough balls, the cookies will be crispier. If you choose to do this, you'll have to reduce the baking time. If I roll smaller balls, I start checking the Honey Drop Cookies after 8 minutes in the oven.**

* Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until they're nicely browned. The cookies will flatten out, all by themselves. Let them cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheets and then move them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

**Hannah's 4th Note: Honey Drop Cookies freeze well. Roll them up in foil, the same way you'd roll coins in the wrapper, put them in a freezer bag, and they'll be fine for 3 months or so.**

**Michelle's Note: When I make these at my rented house just off the Macalester campus, I put the rolls in a box and write "FROZEN KIDNEYS FOR HANNAH'S CAT" on the box. So far, none of my roommates, every one of them a cookie hound, has ever opened the box to see what's inside.**