Family history would hold it that the recipe for these divine cookies came overseas with my great-great-great grandparents' Russian housemaid, who baked them for the family in early December each year so that they would be ready in time for Christmas. Be forewarned: these will take most if not all of an afternoon to prepare, no matter how 1337 your baking skillz. Also, for optimum results, my grandmother recommends a two-week curing period between the baking and the eating. It is worth the wait.

Be also warned that the following will produce up to eight dozen cookies.

Equipment

• Large mixing bowl
• Electric mixer (not necessary, but hightly recommended)
• Refrigerator
• Oven (gas or electric)
• A rolling pin and a flat surface to work on
• Spoons and spatulas and other such implements of culinary destruction
• Cookie sheets with parchment paper
• Wire racks for cooling
• Old, empty coffee canisters or cookie tins
• Lots and lots of plastic freezer bags
• Lots and lots of wire twist-ties, or some other means to seal plastic freezer bags

Ingredients

• 1 cup corn syrup
• 1 cup (slightly softened) butter
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 4 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• A small jar of raspberry jam
• Approximately 1 cup icing sugar
• A small amount of lukewarm water

Method

In a large mixing bowl, cream the corn syrup, butter, sour cream, egg, and sugar together until the mixture is slightly fluffy. (An electric mixer helps.)

Sift the cocoa, flour, baking powder, baking soda, cloves, and nutmeg together. Add this to the wet mixture in about four parts, mixing thoroughly between additions. The dough will be dense to the point that a dough hook may be required for the final addition of flour mixture. It will be approximately the colour, texture, and density of gingerbread dough. This is a good thing.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator. Sit down and relax for two or three hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit, or 375 if you are using a gas oven.

Remove the chilled dough from the fridge. Flour a flat surface (kitchen countertop or marble/glass board) and a rolling pin. Roll the dough out to a thickness of about three millimetres. Cut it into small rounds; a champagne flute or anything round that is about an inch and a half in diameter works well as a cutting tool. Roll the rounds out slightly thinner, to a thickness of about two millimetres (this is important!). Place a small dab of raspberry jam in the middle of each round, and (carefully, to prevent breakage) lift up two opposing edges and pinch them together - the cookie should be shaped like half of a sphere standing on its flat edge, with a ridge along the top. It is very likely that the first few you attempt will burst open, and you will quickly become covered in raspberry jam. Fear not. Transfer successful cookies to a cookie sheet with parchment paper on it, and eat/discard failed glops of dough-with-jam.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the cookies are a very slightly darker brown than the unbaked dough. It is distressingly easy to overbake these; I've lost more than I care to admit after overfilling them and having them burst open while baking, covering cookie sheets in molten rasberry jam, which quickly burns and causes thick black smoke to billow alarmingly from cracks around the oven door. Once they are finished, remove them from the oven and allow them to cool slightly on the cookie sheet before removal to a cooling rack.

All that's left now is adding a glaze. In a small bowl, mix about 1 cup of icing sugar with enough lukewarm water to make a thin white syrup. With a spoon, drizzle the glaze over the cooled cookies. Leave them sitting out until the glaze is completely dry.

Now you're done. Put the cooled and dried cookies into plastic freezer bags and seal the bags, with wire twist-ties or by other means. Place the sealed freezer bags into the old, empty coffee canisters, and put them in the basement or the back of a cupboard or somewhere innocuous for two weeks.

Remove from coffee canisters and freezer bags. Enjoy.

This writeup was created for The Ninjagirls Christmas Special quest. Happy holidays.