Christmas cookies anyone?

[Midge]

While some of you were talking about Thanksgiving recipes here, I have already made my Christmas cookies! :christmastree:

I always start just at the end of November, so I there's enough time to send them overseas. My mom and my grandma have always made the same cookies from the same recipes, so I now do that too. There's seven different ones, and about 3 or 4 of them are, you could say, traditionally Swiss Christmas cookies. You can buy them ready-made too (or you can buy the ready-made dough and cut and bake the cookies yourself...), and there's probably hundreds of different recipes around for the same cookies - but it just ain't Christmas for me, if I don't get the cookies that taste like they always did :USEGUN: - I can't help myself! :duh:

So I was just wondering if anybody else makes any kind special cookies for Christmas?

It's quite a bit of work to make them - except for beating the egg whites stiff, I can't use an electric mixer - it all needs to be done by hand. That's because the recipes are "vintage" too - they might even have been handed down from great-grandma. Otherwise it doesn't work out - and it's not just that. Try finding eggs small enough nowadays... :scratchchin: Today's "normal" eggs are simply too big for these recipes, I always have to buy specially "bio"-labelled eggs that are usually smaller.
But I do enjoy this old-fashioned way of doing it, including kneading the dough in the end and shaping some of the cookies by hand!

Karin

 

[missproper]

Karin,

WOW! You're so organized! It reminds me of my sister...she always does tons of Xmas baking and has it all done by December.
As for me, I usually let my sister take care of the baking while I take care of the drinks :embaressed: ...but this year I think I'll attempt at making Gingerbread men. They may end up looking like ginger-blobs, but at least I'll have tried!
I do remember though, when my grandmother was alive, every Xmas she made these amazing peppermint cookies. I wish I knew the recipe!

 

[listitcafe]

I have vintage cookie cutters off course. I love my Tom and Jerry cutters. I do have a notebook from my grandmother with old family recipes handwritten in it. I have no clue how to decipher them. Anything that starts with a pound of lard is dodgy for me...

I make Swedish Klug which if made right could put you under the table with one sip. I made the full recipe one year and gave it out as gifts. It is so sweet and spicy the alchohol content sneeks up on you. So I make a toned down version which I heat up and serve with raisins and almonds.

-Chris

 

[The Vintage Merchant]

i used to always make angel crisps and chocolate crinkles...my mom used to make home-made caramels (they truly melted in one's mouth ~ ), fudge, divinity and penuchi?? (maple flavored fudge) and those little powdered sugar covered white cookies? can't think of the name ~ but they also just melted in the mouth!!

dang. i'm getting a sugar rush just thinkin about it ~

oh, and Spritz cookies. and english toffee. and peanut brittle.

huh. i'm surprised i have any teeth by now...

AND EVERYONE MAKES CHEX MIX, RIGHT???!!!

off to check my pantry for ingredients... :damnit:

 

[Jonathan]

My Christmas baking is very boring but tasty...I make traditional Scottish shortbread (1 pound butter, 1 pound flour, 1 pound sugar) since I am mostly Scottish and shortbread is the only edible thing the Scots ever invented... I also make the BEST fruitcake EVER. Even people who hate fruitcake have to admit my fruitcake is fantastic (except that its not mine, its Nigella Lawson's boiled fruitcake recipe) and otherwise I buy an assortment of German cookies at our local deli - pfefferkuchen etc.

 

[Midge]

I took some of my cookies to work today - they usually disappear in no time .

And you guys all make my mouth water even more.
Hmm... gingerbread, home-made caramels (oh, nothing melts in your mouth like that!), shortbread (that was the first thing I ever baked all on my own - I tried it because there were so few ingredients!) and Pfefferkuchen... or Peperkoeken as they say in Dutch. I buy them whenever I go to Holland.
I must inherited my dad's and granddad's cookie monster-genes :duh:. My great-grandma tried to hide the cookies every year, so that my grandpa wouldn't eat them before Christmas - often with no success.

I have vintage cookie cutters too, from grandma, but not Tom & Jerry ones. Just classic ones. Those cookie cutters must be so cute! I adore Tom & Jerry - especially the oldest cartoons, which are just so wild.

Karin