I'm in need of 'traditional English cookie recipes' that were popular around the time of Charles Dickens...1812-1870 timeframe. I am hosting a Christmas open house in December and the theme is Charles Dickens...do any of you have any recipes you might share that falls into that category? Thanks!

SORRY but this came up for me but when I typed in traditional english cookies in a search, a bunch came up but when typing it here it wouldn't come up again...?

Okay I tried it with BING and it came up so lets try it again...
There were so many recipes of traditional english decent.

www.traditionalenglishcookies.com

come on ladies....help me out here!

I don't understand why I can get a page of recipes on my search engine but not on this BWS site! Sorry! A-ha, check your emails I think I got it to go to you there.

All I can find online are English shortbread recipes. I think traditional English cookies are/were called "biscuits." I have a lot of cookbooks in my collection, but I'm coming up pretty blank on this one.. I find recipes for traditional English puddings, trifles, etc. But not too much in the cookie arena...

Here's some:

http://www.feyarteoffaeries.com/krysplace/vict/kitch/victrecipes-cookies.htm

Most of what I found were from Ladies magazines of the time and the directions weren't very good. I'll keep looking.

This one looks interesting:

http://www.thespicehouse.com/recipes/victorian-lavender-cookies-with-rose-water-icing-recipe

Here's one for Victorian Lace Cookies - scroll down to get to it:

http://www.victorianbazaar.com/recipes.html

Got to have gingerbread cookies!

http://www.about-recipes.com/recipes/126662-victorian-gingerbread-cookies.html

More here:

http://www.amazing-green-tea.com/victorian-tea-time.html

Let me know if you need more and I'll keep looking!

How are you doing on your English cookie recipe collection, Dee?

I started to think about Christmas cookie baking this morning. I have had a delightful tradition for the past few years of going to my Norwegian step-mother's house in rural Madison, Wisconsin for a Saturday shortly after Thanksgiving, and joining with her, her daughters and daughters-in-law as well as a couple of special friends to spend the day making traditional Norwegian Christmas cookies.

There is a tradition in Norway that every good hausfrau will be sure to make AT LEAST seven kinds of homemade Christmas cookies.

So we gather by 8 AM in my step-mother's spacious and sunny kitchen and spend the day making these cookies. We each bring 7 cookie tins with us, and each of us is in charge of making one of the cookies.

Then at the end of the day, we each go home with seven different kinds of cookies...

We have so much fun, as there are usually surprises during the day. Once a male stripper showed up, though I wasn't there that year... However, we DO fortify ourselves with Bloody Maries, and order in pizza or send someone out to a deli for lunch...

This is a "no man" zone, although now and then men do drop by to see how it's all going. And at the end of the day, we all go out for dinner...

However, my dear step-mother is not feeling well, and says she will not be hosting the cookie baking this year... Maybe her daughter will take over as the the party house, otherwise we'll all be on our own to make these delicious treats.

Speaking of holiday cookie treats, I caught a segment on the Today show this morning in which a traditional ITALIAN cookie was baked... As far as I could tell, these cookies we pretty much like one of our Norwegian staples, except the Italian crostoli were seasoned with orange and lemon rind, while the Norwegian ones, called fattigman, feature cardamom.

Here's a link to fattigman: Norwegian Fattigman Christmas cookies

And here's a link to the Today show cookie: Italian Crostoli Christmas Cookies