Sugar hail cookies

Jan Hagel

300 grams -10½oz. Flour
170 grams - 6oz. butter or margarine
140 grams - 5 oz. sugar
2 tbsp cinnamonv 1/2 tsp salt
140 grams - 5oz. rock sugar
2 egg whites

Mix the softened butter with the sugar, cinnamon, salt and the white of one egg till the mixture is creamy. Sift the flour on a board or countertop and put the butter mixture in small dabs all over the flour. Knead it into a smooth ball. Let the dough cool in the fridge for 45 minutes. 

Put the rock sugar (kandij) in a tea towel and pound it until it is about the size of rice grains.

Grease a cookie sheet and put the dough on it, rolling it out into a thin layer. Brush it with the remaining egg white and sprinkle it with the rock sugar. Cut - but not separate - the dough in strips of approx. 1½” (4 cm) wide and 3½” (9 cm) long and bake in a preheated oven for 20 minutes at 150º C (300º F). Let the baked ‘cookie’ cool off and then break at pre-cuts for individual cookies.

Jan Hagel - Johnny Hail - is Dutch for ‘an unruly mob’ or ‘rabble,’ with hagel in the sense of ‘multitude’ or ‘swarm.’ In the cookie, the rock sugar resembles hail.