Instructions:

In a small bowl, dissolve Ammonia Carbonate (Hartshorn) in the milk add the salt. Cream the butter in a mixer. In a separate large bowl measure your flour, the spices, the salt and baking soda. Using a whisk stir the flour mixture to blend well. Once butter starts to lighten, add the brown and white sugars. Blend for a minute. It should be creamy in consistency. Add the eggs and mix well, another minutes. The batter should look very smooth now. Add the molasses. Add the Ammonia Carbonate. Once well mixed, add the dry ingredients in 1/4 cup increments. If you are using a large "Kitchen Aid" type mixer, please be sure to stop mixer and pull up beater from dough. Scrape dough from bottom of bowl and from the beaters. Continue mixing till dough starts to adhere to itself. Be careful not to strain your mixer. If mixer starts to wine and slow down, pull beater up and remove dough from beater. Push down again and mix dough till well blended. Put dough in a shallow, rectangular plastic container. You don't want the dough in a ball, but more a 1 1/2 inch thick rectangle. This way it will be easier to roll out later. Cover container with dough and refrigerate at least one hour , and overnight if desired, before rolling it out on a lightly-flour dusted surface. Preheat oven to 350 . Prepare your baking sheets by either lining with a silicon liner or parchment paper. Mix the 1/4 cup cinnamon with the 1/8 cup of four and use this to dust your Springerle Presses. Lightly dust your rolling pin as well as the surface you are going to roll doll out onto. As you are rolling the dough, you will want to insure it doesn't stick to your work surface, by adding scant amounts of flour. underneath of the dough. Each time you spread the dough out, the un-floured dough will stick to any surface that doesn't have enough flour on it, so it's best to run a thin spatula under dough often and add a very little four if needed Always try to roll dough from the middle of dough outwards, changing angles of rolling pin from time to time, but still pushing from center outwards. Once your dough is just under a 1/2 inch thick. Start pressing out your cookies. Dust each press, each time with the cinnamon/flour mixture. Tap out excess and press into dough. Use cutter and slide metal spatula under the dough so the cookie releases from the work surface. Lift freshly cut cookies out and place onto your baking sheet. . Once you have pressed out many shapes as you can, pull the remaining scrap dough together and form a ball. Knead well adding flour only if sticky. e flour to your surface and roll ball out with rolling pin, again to a little less than 1/4 inch. Continue with Springerle Presses and fill another cookie sheet. Once sheet is filled allowed cookies to dry uncovered for at least 3 hours. Bake at 250 for 20 minutes. Turning or alternating sheets from bottom to top shelf after 10 minutes. Once cookies are baked, pull out of the oven and allow to sit for a least one minute before removing them to a cooling rack. If you try to move them to early, they can break. Cookies will keep up to a month in a sealed tin or plastic container.