Morning Lunettes scented with anise and coffee. Here we go again. A few cookies for milk with a new flavor. Different aromas, same ingredients. Milk, flour, eggs and then anise seeds and coffee. Baking cookies is a routine, almost daily; I make them often and haven’t bought them for years. Preferably I do not use butter, I add natural aromas — in this recipe anise and coffee.
I always look for simplicity, so breakfast is nourishing without weighing you down.
Flour, very fresh eggs, seed oil, sugar, milk are some of the fixed ingredients; the combination, aromas, technique and shape change to always have a good and fresh product. Above all without any preservatives. I understand it isn’t always possible, but I made a choice to have a better diet, since my children were little; now they’re adults and they also try to find a compromise between time and care for food.
You can find a few more breakfast suggestions below.
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Economical
- Preparation time: 1 Hour
- Portions: about 1.8 lb of cookies (approximately 28 oz)
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons
Ingredients
Flour, milk, eggs, sugar, anise and coffee become morning lunettes.
- 500 g flour (about 4 cups (approximately 17.6 oz / 1.1 lb))
- 120 ml sunflower seed oil (about 1/2 cup (8 tbsp))
- 150 g sugar (about 3/4 cup (approx. 5.3 oz). Plus a little more for the surface.)
- 2 eggs (Plus one egg white, lightly beaten, for the surface.)
- 150 ml milk (about 2/3 cup (5 fl oz))
- 10 g baking ammonia (ammonium bicarbonate) (about 2.5 tsp (10 g))
- 2 tablespoons coffee powder
- 2 to taste star anise
Steps
In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients, mix, and add the liquid ingredients. If you use whole anise seeds you can grind them with a coffee grinder together with a little sugar, or together with coffee beans. You will obtain a soft dough with a light coffee color.
Roll the dough out until you get a sheet about 0.2 in thick (approximately 1/5 inch), and cut the lunettes. Brush them with the lightly beaten egg white, then dip the surface in granulated sugar.
Bake in a preheated oven at 374°F for about 15 minutes. Fragrant, crispy, flavorful and perfect for dunking! What more could you want for breakfast?
A few extra tips
They keep for many days in a paper bag or glass jar. I always make double the recipe so I have a reserve; in fact, when I make new flavors I give some to my tasters. That way I can find any faults I may have missed and offer a recipe that is easy to execute and reliably successful.
