If a chewy, spicy cookie is your favorite kind of cookie, this old-fashioned hermits recipe is sure to be a keeper.
Made with a flavorful combination of molasses, raisins, and spices such as cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves, hermits are especially nice during the holiday season, but I love them year-round. They keep well, can be sweetened with a custom glaze (vanilla, rum, lemon, orange—you name it), and have a mellow sweetness that’s hard to resist.
This traditional hermits recipe calls for raisins, but you can easily swap them out for golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried currants, or a combination of two or three.
Our favorite hermits recipe includes an easy glaze topping for just the right amount of extra sweetness. Photo Credit : Aimee Tucker
Similar to biscotti, traditional hermits are made by baking a long “log” of dough that is then cut into bars. This gives classic hermits their chewy centers and crisp edges. If you prefer, however, you can make hermit bars in a square pan, yielding a hermit that looks more like a brownie, or soft hermit cookies in the more familiar “drop” style.
Cut your glazed and almost-cooled hermits into bars, and enjoy! Photo Credit : Aimee Tucker
No matter the shape a hermit takes, I’ve never met one I didn’t like. But I must confess the traditional crisp-edge, chewy-center hermit bars are my favorite. They’re perfect for dunking into coffee or hot chocolate, and their ability to keep well makes them a great choice for Christmas cookie swaps or holiday care packages.
This hermits recipe is perfect for enjoying, and for giving. Photo Credit : Aimee Tucker
Make a batch this weekend and find out why this old-fashioned hermits recipe is Yankee-approved.
This post was first published in 2017 and has been updated.
Aimee Tucker is Yankee Magazine’s Home Editor and the Senior Digital Editor of NewEngland.com. A lifelong New Englander and Yankee contributor since 2010, Aimee has written columns devoted to history, foliage, retro food, and architecture, and regularly shares her experiences in New England travel, home, and gardening. Her most memorable Yankee experiences to date include meeting Stephen King, singing along to a James Taylor Fourth of July concert at Tanglewood, and taking to the skies in the Hood blimp for an open-air tour of the Massachusetts coastline.
