Holidays are a special time for baking with warming spices like anise and ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon. Foods made with these aromatic plant extracts bring ordinary foods to life - and are used by cooks all over the world to enhance the flavor of their main dishes as well as holiday pastries, pies, cakes and cookies! Growing up, my mother's kitchen always smelled of Rugelah, sugar and chocolate cookies...molasses, ginger and biscotti from Thanksgiving through the year's end! Oh my...sometimes she'd have 20 different kinds of cookies piled up as I walked through the door after school! The smell was nothing less than heavenly. But mom's favorite cookie was anise biscotti - the smell so pungent that when I get a whiff of it now the memories come back in mouth-watering clarity...I loved her perfect, lightly golden cookies! And Mom's cookies were never hard like commercial biscotti - they were softer, more delicate and just melted on your tongue. So with that in mind I created this once-baked (rather than twice-baked like traditional biscotti) anise cookie. This recipe can be made Paleo (using eggs) or egg free. Either way it's Gluten & Grain Free, and will fill your kitchen with delicious memories that will last a lifetime!