German Christmas Cookies-A Year Round Delight

German Christmas Cookies—A Year-Round Delight

The Christmas markets in Cologne spread throughout the city, and offer different delights, but all offer at least one variety of Christmas cookies, and usually many more than one. At the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, another one worth a visit, visitors step off the train into a large tent filled with booth after booth offering a dizzying choice of cookies.

Most of the cookie recipes are relatively simple to make. The smell of fresh baked cookies filling the kitchen on a cold day is wonderful and not just at Christmas. In these often grey January and February days, making cookies with children or grand-children can fill the house with warmth and good memories.

Here are a few typical German cookie recipes that can be adapted in various ways to suit the season. Red and white Valentine icing and sprinkles make them perfect for February, green and white St. Patrick’s Day icing and sprinkles for March.

This first recipe will be familiar to many, as a variation of it is made throughout the American south. In Texas and Louisiana they are called Pecan Sandies, and are popular there at Christmas time too. They are easy to make and always well.

Nusse

1/2 pound butter or margarine (butter makes a MUCH better cookie)
¼ c. sugar (Splenda or another sugar substitute CAN be used but the result will not be as rich tasting)
2 ½ cups flour
1 cup pecans, chopped fine
2 teaspoons vanilla
Confectioners Sugar

Cream together the butter and the sugar, add the vanilla and the flour making thick dough. Mix in the chopped pecans. Roll the dough into balls or half-moon shaped cookies and bake them in a 300 degree preheated oven for 20 minutes. When cool, roll them in powdered sugar. These will keep for days in a closed tin box.

This next recipe is also quite easy and makes enough cookies to feed a hungry crowd. This is basically a shortbread recipe that is popular in England and in Scotland as well. The cookies can be served plain, or decorated with sprinkles or nuts. They have a rich, caramel taste. They are good if simply marked crossways with the tines of a fork, or with a single pecan or walnut half placed in the middle of each round.

German Sugar Cookies

1 pound butter
1 pound sugar (2 cups)
4 to 5 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
Grated lemon rind (optional)

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the vanilla and the baking powder. Gradually add in the flour to make thick dough. Roll the dough into a ball and refrigerate 10 to 12 hours or overnight. It can be rolled out and cut with cookie cutters or rolled into a strip, and then individual cookies cut off in rounds.
Spread on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 375 for ten to twelve minutes, until a golden color. You can decorate the cookies with nuts before cooking them or with icing and sprinkles after they are baked. This will make several dozen cookies, again depending on the size you wish.


Oma’s Cookies

1 pound. butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
6 cups flour
4 eggs
1 lemon rind, grated

Beat together one egg and the grated lemon rind. Then cream together the butter and the sugar, add the lemon/egg mixture, and then the rest of the eggs one at a time. Gradually add the flour. Mix the dough with your hands until all the flour disappears. Refrigerate the dough 10 to 12 hours, or overnight.
Roll out the dough to about a ½ inch thickness and cut with cookie cutters. Spread on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 400 for 8 to 10 minutes—cookies should be golden with a light brown edge. Cool, and decorate as wished.

Cookies, hot chocolate and a nice fire on a January or February day can magically re-create Germany at home until a trip there can be scheduled.