Grammy Vargo’s Kossuth Moons

Jane Vargo Brown’s grandmother arrived in America in 1907 at age 14 carrying her mother’s Hungarian recipes. These moon-shaped cookies appeared on every Christmas dessert tray Brown’s grandmother made during her life.

6 cups flour

6 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 pound butter (4 sticks), room

temperature

2 cups sugar

2 whole eggs

4 egg yolks

4 egg whites (reserve for topping)

½ pint sour cream (1 cup)

½ teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ ounces whiskey or rum

Zest from ½ lemon

Topping

4 egg whites

½ cup finely chopped walnuts 2 tablespoons sugar

Instructions: In a very large bowl, sift flour with baking powder and salt. Work in butter like pie dough until fully incorporated. Add sugar. (We used a processor to combine flour, baking powder, salt, butter and sugar before transferring to a large bowl to add wet ingredients.) Stir in whole eggs, egg yolks, sour cream, vanilla, zest and whiskey. Mix to fully incorporate. (The dough will be very tacky. Add additional flour if necessary. We refrigerated the dough for 2 hours before rolling and cutting.)

Turn dough onto a flat, floured surface and roll to ¼-inch thickness (can be done in batches). Using a 3-inch half-moonshaped cookie cutter, punch out dough. Place moons on parchment-lined cookie sheet 1 inch apart (they do not spread much).

For the topping, beat egg whites until stiff. Combine chopped walnuts with sugar in a bowl. Brush each cookie with egg whites and sprinkle with walnuts/ sugar mixture.

Bake at 350 degrees until slightly golden, about 15 minutes.

Note: Grammy must have had some mighty big bowls in her kitchen arsenal. We halved the original recipe, which began with a whopping 12 cups of flour. While we used the suggested half-moon cookie cutter, these cookies can be any shape.

Makes about 5 dozen cookies