Growing up I loved making these classic Christmas cookies with my mom, but I could never quite get the dough right myself. Partly because the passed-down recipe says stuff like “dash of baking soda” and “sufficient flour” (???). Sarah has a recipe for cut-out cookies (pg. 62) in the book, but I wanted to take advantage of my mom being in town and tackle the family recipe first. What makes these different from your standard Christmas cut-out cookies is that the base is a tea cookie instead of sugar. Tea cookies are similar, sometimes referred to as “tea cakes”, but they are softer, buttery-er and a little less sweet than your standard sugar cookie. And as the name suggests, they pair perfectly with a hot cup of tea.
My mom watched me slowly add in the flour until it was “sufficient” and I watched her roll out the dough and cut out the shapes. All was going well until I took out each batch to find several flat, indistinguishable shapes. I was a little heartbroken, not going to lie. We blamed it on the altitude until my mom tasted the raw dough and said, “This tastes more like butter and eggs than usual.” To which I quietly replied, “I didn’t put eggs in it…” We laughed, but the recipe I wrote down didn’t say eggs!! Luckily, my mom brought her recipe box and we flipped through until we found it. There it was… “2 eggs.” By that point I had already used up most of my flour but I was determined to make these tonight. (After all, my kitchen was already a mess!) We walked to the corner store down the street and I paid $3.49 for a one-pound bag of flour and tried again. The second batch turned out perfectly!! (Thank god.)
The next morning was the fun part – decorating! Traditionally, we make royal icing with powdered sugar, meringue powder, a dash of almond extract and a little water. And of course, plenty of fun sprinkles! These taste like childhood.
Mrs Furr’s Tea Cookies
2 cups of granulated sugar
1 cup of Crisco or unsalted butter
1/2 cup of buttermilk
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt
1 teaspoon of nutmeg
About 1 2/3 cups of all-purpose flour (plus a lot more for rolling)Mix all of the ingredients and slowly add the flour as to not put too much. You want the least amount of flour possible at this stage! The dough should look a little too wet at first but bear with us. Remember, there will be lots of flour added when you roll out the dough to cut the shapes.
Roll out the dough on a very well-floured surface and begin cutting out the shapes. If you’re going for taste over looks, the softer the dough the better. If you want your cookies to be prettier, add more flour a little at a time. The cookies won’t be as soft, but they will hold their shape better. (And trust me, they still taste pretty good!)
Bake at 350° for about 8-10 minutes. Be sure not to overcook these! They should have no color and be slightly puffy.
Aunt Cynthia’s Royal Icing
confectioners sugar
almond extract
food coloring
warm water
sprinklesFor the icing, start with 1 cup of confectioners sugar in a bowl and add a couple of drops of food coloring and a dash of almond extract. Add the warm water a tablespoon at a time until you get your desired consistency. We prefer ours to be more like a glaze. Decorate as you wish!
December Cookbook: 100 Cookies: The Baking Book for Every Kitchen by Sarah Kieffer
Oatmeal raisin cookies are an important family tradition over here – well, more accurately, eating the raw dough out of the mixing bowl before we even bake the cookies is the tradition. With my top research assistant (mom) in town, I wanted to make Sarah’s oatmeal raisin cookies (pg. 52) so that we can compare the two recipes. Ultimately we decided that our recipe is better when baked but that the raw dough is equally as good. We still ate plenty of these for breakfast though.
Per my mom’s request, I also made a pumpkin cheesecake. (A cheesecake? In this economy?!) I ended up spending all night making this because someone (me) “baked” it for an hour without actually turning the oven on…🤦🏻♀️ So another hour actually baking it, an hour letting it cool in the oven, and another half hour letting it come to room temperature. It was well past midnight before I could put it in the fridge to set overnight. BUT it turned out to be delicious so, I suppose it was all worth it.
Thanks for reading, sweeties! 🍎
I feel bad. I told you the recipe was Great-Gran’s recipe (my great-grandmother on Jackie’s side), but it was Mrs. Furr’s recipe (my great-great grandmother on Howard’s side). Sorry…