How to obliterate hundreds of years of tradition in 45 minutes (including prep time)

These would be Jan Hagel Cookies, a traditional Dutch cookie made by pressing dough into a pan, shellacing it with egg white and covering it with a layer of slivered almonds.

They WOULD be if we'd made them correctly.

See, we attended a Dutch baking class this week at The House of History, where the lovely and talented educators walked us through the process of making three kinds of traditional cookies: Jan Hagels, Dutch wafer cookies and sweet pretzels.

The Jan Hagels were our favorites so we tried to recreate them at home.

The recipe is as follows:

JAN HAGEL COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

1 cup sugar

1 cup butter
2 cups flour

1 egg (separated)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup slivered almonds

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

In large bowl, cream butter and sugar; add egg yolk.

Add flour and cinnamon and mix well.

Spread batter onto baking dish or pan, press evenly.

Brush top with egg white.

Sprinkle layer of almonds.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Cut into rectangles, squares or triangles.

Of course we got this:

Which, by the laws that govern tradition, will serve as evidence of our crimes. We didn't press our batter thin enough, and our almonds were pulverized not slivered.

(I'd have shown you a picture of the ones we made at the class, but we ate them all.)

Oh well.

They still taste delicious.

They even made us want to try our hand at wrecking other traditional Dutch recipes.