How To Cook Ancient Roman Honey Cookies

Every year for my Latin class in grade school, we had a (semi-traditional) Roman Banquet. I chose to bake sesame cookies fairly consistently for two reasons. First, they’re extremely easy and require few ingredients, and second, they’re delicious – the perfect combination of cookie and biscuit. Yet another reason to admire the Romans.
This morning, after waking up late and enjoying my first free day in a while, I decided to revisit this wonderful snack. Since the cookies are sweetened with honey (they’re not overly sweet), I can completely justify eating them with breakfast.
The dough takes about ten minutes to make. Chill it in the refrigerator for about an hour, then bake for another ten minutes.
Ancient Roman Honey Cookies
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 cup sesame seeds
Instructions:
In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.
In another bowl, combine butter, honey and eggs with an electric mixer until well combined. Gradually beat in the flour mixture. Cover and chill the dough about 1 hour or until firm.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease two baking sheets. Form chilled dough into 1-inch balls and place balls on prepared baking sheets.
Flatten each ball slightly. Bake 10 minutes or until golden brown.
Remove cookies from baking sheets and roll in sesame seeds while still warm. Cool on a wire rack.
After searching a bit online, I found the recipe above from The Sacramento Bee, which is very similar to the recipe my Latin teacher gave me years ago. The only change I made is to brush the cookies with a bit of melted butter before dipping into the sesame seeds. If you don’t want the extra butter (even though they taste great…), just roll the cookies in sesame seeds before you bake them (they won’t stick without butter once they’re cooked).
Particularly if you’re in the mood to make fun shapes (see picture above), the recipe above will make about 40 cookies. Make all 40, though, because they’ll be eaten quickly!
I’d love to hear from any Latin students/parents of students about ancient Roman festivities taking place in schools. Feel free to leave a comment below!