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When life hands you snow, make cookies

Contributed by: Donna Feldman on 12/11/2007

December is cookie baking month, but who can think about Christmas cookies when it's 70 degreesoutside? So the recent snowy days were a welcome excuse to get motivated. I'd already stocked up on unsalted butter, a must-have ingredient, and the first recipe on the list is my mother's traditional Christmas cookies.

Every year, on Christmas Eve Day, she put up the tree and strung the lights while simultaneously supervising her 5 children making cookies. I don't know why she waited until December 24th to do all this, especially considering that the next day she baked pies, made stuffing and cooked a giant turkey, while simultaneously supervising opening gifts. But I grew up thinking that was the normal thing to do. Now I make cookies well ahead of time, and they keep just fine, assuming you don't eat them all up.

I have a hazy memory of the original recipe printed in one of those church group cookbooks popular in the 1940's and '50s. It was spiral bound and I think the recipe title was German Christmas Cookies. We didn't have a powerful stand mixer, so mixing the dough was all by hand. I remember fighting with the cold butter and sugar, trying to combine them with a fork. For some reason, Mom didn't know about letting the butter warm up before mixing. And don't get me started on grating the lemon rind. Scraping a lemon on one of those hand graters -- where the rind is 90% stuck on the grater and you keep grating your knuckles along with it--ugh!

Once the dough was ready, we cut out cookies with holiday shapes: a tree, a bell, a weird shape that appeared to be a Santa holding a bag, and a star, which I still have. Then the fun began. We decorated the cookies with egg yolk paint. I think the recipe even suggested this. When I started doing this with my children, no one had heard of it around here. Having made plenty of other cookies over the years, I appreciate egg yolk paint for this reason: it makes the cookies look colorful and fun, but does not add to the calories like frosting does. I mean really, these are cookies. Do we really need more sugar and fat on them? Plus all that sweet frosting changes the taste of the cookies. Egg yolk paint is tasteless.

If you aren't familiar with the concept, you can Google "egg yolk paint". This recipe comes up, which is quite accurate: http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/craftyrecipes/a/bleggyolkpaint.htm. Basically, you separate an egg and put the yolk in a small cup. Add a dash of water (1 tsp) and whisk it up with a fork. Then add a few drops of food coloring and whisk it up again. The result is a slightly thick "paint" that you apply to the cookie with a pastry brush, although I've used a spoon in a pinch. Smooth it out and add some colored sprinkles if you like. Then bake the cookies. The paint bakes right on, and doesn't smear or fall off.

There are drawbacks to egg yolk paint. You can't get as fancy with the color design as you can with frosting, so if elaborate cookies are your goal, this isn't for you. And the color of the yolk affects the paint color. Blue is always a little green, and red turns a bit orange. And kids + paint? Well, they mix. If you start out with 4 paint colors, you will end up with 4 cups of a brownish color. Small children don't remember to keep the green brush with the green paint; they put it in the red paint. They will also try to paint several colors onto one cookie, which is hard to do without the paints running into each other. Nevertheless, kids will have fun, and aren't as likely to eat egg yolk paint as frosting.

Finally here's the recipe, which I've adjusted slightly for altitude:

Gloria's German Christmas Cookie Recipe

½ lb unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
grated rind of one lemon
3 eggs
1 tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon
1/8th tsp baking powder
4 cups flour

Cream the butter and sugar (use a mixer), then beat in the eggs. Zest a lemon (lemon zester) and then mince up the zest with a knife. Add lemon, salt, cinnamon and baking powder to batter and mix. Mix in 4 cups flour until you have a very stiff dough. Wrap in wax paper and refrigerate overnight. If you're going to refrigerate it longer, put it in a plastic bag.

Roll out sections of dough (no more than half of the dough at once). It will be hard to roll if it's cold, so let it warm up slightly. Roll to ¼ inch thick and cut out shapes. Put on a cold/room temperature cookie sheet and decorate as desired. Or leave plain and decorate with frosting after baking.

Bake at 400 degreesfor 8 minutes. Sides of cookies will be just brown. If cookies overbake, turn down oven. If cookies spread out, turn up oven slightly. They shouldn't spread during baking. Without frosting, the cookies keep for 2-3 weeks in airtight cookie tins or plastic containers.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Donna Feldman

Louisville , CO

Donna Feldman has posted 129 stories and 1 comment since joining on 9/14/2005. Donna Feldman 's average story rating is 4.9.
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