Grand Dad’s Christmas Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups butter, softened
1 cup sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 egg, beaten
2/3 cup finely chopped almonds (or your favorite nuts finely chopped)
colored sugar crystals
Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350 F. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in flour. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour. Roll out onto a well-floured surface to 1/4-in. thickness. Brush lightly with egg.
Sprinkle with the nuts and sugar. Using a fluted pastry cutter or knife, cut into 2-in. x 1-in. strips. Place 1 inches apart on baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10-12 minute or until lightly browned. Cool on wire racks.
My Grandfather and I used to make these cookies at Christmas time. He would use red, green, blue and yellow sugar crystals. We would make enough of these to put in small, clean cookie tins we would get from Goodwill or some other second hand store, tie a ribbon around it, add a bow and give them out as gifts to our neighbors.
What I remember most about making these cookies was the weekend before Christmas we would go to the store, buy these the items we needed and that Sunday after church, we would spend the entire afternoon and late into the evening making them.
The next Sunday, we would take several of the tins and hand them out to the church staff. He said his mother taught him this recipe, and she learned it from her mother. When he served the cookies, he always served them with hot coffee or hot tea.
He would sell these cookies at the church’s yearly Thanksgiving bake sale and then turn around and donate everything he made from the cookies back to the church to use for their Christmas dinner baskets and toys for low income children. These cookies remind me of his loving, gentle spirit.
