Every family that celebrates Christmas has its own special traditions. In my family, Christmas always meant lots and lots of cookies. Some days before the 25th, my mother, my sisters, and I always spent an afternoon making them. We made anise-flavored snowballs, pizzelle, and crispy, deep-fried butterflies that we dusted with powdered sugar.
We always made some cookie-cutter cookies. They were not necessarily a particular flavor or recipe. What was important was that the dough could be rolled out and cut into the shapes of candy canes, stars, Christmas trees, and so on. After baking them, we decorated them with frosting and nonpareils. We made a mess, but we had fun. And we wound up with a great supply of cookies.
I continued the cookie-making tradition with my own kids when I grew up. We made most of the traditional cookies. but I like experimenting with new recipes as well. I’ve made festive-looking, and great-tasting, dried cranberry and pistachio biscotti. Ginger cookies flavored with both powdered and candied ginger. I remember coconut cookies with a little piece of chocolate embedded in the center as being particularly good.
One year, I found a recipe for Christmas wreath cookies. I don’t remember where the recipe came from. They’re just simple, basic butter cookies decorated with chopped pistachios and a dot of strawberry jam in the center. They do look like mini wreaths, and they’re tasty. The combination of pistachio and strawberry is good, and the butter doesn’t hurt either.
My father came to our house for Christmas dinner that year, and of all the foods and desserts we had, he particularly liked the wreath cookies. So I made them again the next year, and the next. Sometimes I made enough to give him his own tin full of Christmas wreath cookies to take home. No matter how many other cookies I made, I made them for him.
I find that now, several years after his death, I still have to make the wreath cookies. We all like them, but we like all sorts of cookies. It’s our memory of his liking them that matters. Which is how traditions become traditions.
Christmas Wreath Cookies
One-half cup butter, softened
One-third cup granulated sugar
One egg yolk
One-half teaspoon vanilla extract
One-half teaspoon almond extract
One cup all-purpose flour
One-half teaspoon salt
One slightly beaten egg white
Three-quarters cup finely chopped pistachios
One-half cup strawberry jam
Preheat oven to 300. Grease two cookie sheets or line with parchment.
With mixer at medium speed, beat butter until creamy. Then add sugar, egg yolk, and extracts. When they’re well mixed, add the flour and salt gradually until a soft dough forms.
Using about one teaspoon of dough for each cookie, roll into a ball and dip in the beaten egg white, then into the chopped nuts.
Place each one on a cookie sheet. Then, with your fingertip, make a small dent in the middle of each one.
Bake for 25 minutes. While the cookies are still warm, put about a half teaspoon of jam in the center of the cookies.
Store, tightly covered. Makes about three dozen. Enjoy.
This recipe pic doesn`t look so great to me:(
Posted by: Rotisserie Chicken Recipe | February 20, 2010 at 04:49 AM