Aniseed Cookies

Traditionally, these are Christmas cookies, enlivened with brandy or bourbon and shortened with lard to make a crisp sugar cookie shaped in a royal fleurde-lis. The dough is soft and wonderful for rolling and cookie cutting, but a good old-fashioned way is to roll out the dough in a single thin sheet on a baking pan and then cut the baked dough into diamonds as soon as it comes from the oven. (As it cools the dough becomes too brittle to cut without breaking.) Anise is one of the ancient Me