I will second that! It would be nice to have that recipe. Who knows, someday we might be making our own soap with lard and ashes from the fireplace. If that’s how you do it. I know I season my cast-iron with lard. It probably doesn’t have to be super good stuff though.
But I hear lard makes wonderful pie crust and tortillas.
It does. My granny had a restaurant, and her pie chef always used lard-best light and flaky crusts ever.
One year for Christmas, I bought my girls a cookbook for uses of Lard, and a good quality organic pasture raised pork lard—the leaf kind.
I use lard for any recipes that call for shortening.
One is the old family Christmas cookie recipe. The cut out anise cookies.
Here’s the recipe. You can find the Anise OIL in any grocery store in the candy making section. Or at Michael’s for example.
The ammonium carbonate I found both online and at a really little, family run Italian specialty store. They had good stuff for making Italian pastries etc. I printed the recipe as my mom gave it to me but found out that you do not need to scald the milk. I don’t know why she did it. It is heat activated so if you add it to hot milk, it WILL foam greatly.
Anise Christmas cookies 350F 15 – 20 mins Makes 200+ cookies
Scald: 1 Pint milk and let cool to room temperature. Add 1 oz. by weight of ammonium carbonate for baking to the cooled/cold milk and stir well to dissolve all the ammonium carbonate. (Never add ammonium carbonate to hot milk. It will foam!)
Cream together: 4 C lard (or shortening)
2 C sugar
Add and mix well: 6 eggs and 1/4 oz anise OIL (not extract) (The small bottles are 1/8 oz so you’ll need two of them)
Add the milk and ammonium carbonate mixture and mix well.
Add enough pastry flour to make dough stiff and just pull cleanly away from the bowl. It will take almost 5 pounds.
Roll out on floured pastry board or cloth about 1/4 inch thick.
Cut out cookies and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake cookies at 350 for about 15 minutes, or whatever your oven takes for the cookies to become golden around the edges and lightly browned on the bottom. (Depends on your oven. It may take up to 20 minutes. Just check regularly)
Let cool before frosting.
Frosting: 2 TBSP butter
1/4 cup or so of milk
10X sugar
Mix until spreadable but not runny. If it’s too stiff it’s too hard to frost the cookies. Sprinkle with colored sugar.