This is my grandmother's recipe, but since I didn't have a chance to know her I think of them as my mom's cookies. She uses 5 pounds of flour in her batch because she makes them once a year for the family reunion, so I whittled her recipe down into a 4 dozen batch. The amount of anise is up to you. If you think you didn't add enough anise to the cookies, you can add some to the icing. I like to leave some of them unfrosted since they're pretty darn good plain.