Christmas Cookies

My mom and my Aunt Jean always made the best cookies at Christmas.

That's my mom standing and Aunt Jean is seated next to her. The other two women are my mom's older sister Mary and her daughter Augustine. This picture was taken in Dec 1959 (I think).

We usually didn't have Christmas cake but these cookies were around the house in abundance. I stopped making them for many years but now that I am retired and living close to my daughter, we decided to revive our favourite recipes and spend a day making them together. And of course, we had a little helper to help cook and test the results.

Shortbread
I am going to include the full recipe but feel free to make only half.

• a scant 5 cups AP flour
• 1 lb salted butter
• 1 cup icing sugar
• a bit of vanilla (get the good stuff)

Cream the butter and vanilla, then mix in the sugar, then the flour. Form into balls and prick with a fork or roll out and cut into Christmas shapes (I prefer the balls).

Bake at 300°F for about 30 minutes (although this depends on the thickness) or until the bottoms brown.

Greek Cakes
That's what my mom called them even though they are cookies, not cake. These are very similar to shortbreads but have a very unique taste. You'll need a nice cup of tea or coffee or a cold glass of milk with these - they stick to the roof of your mouth because of the icing sugar on top! These get better with age if you can stand to not eat them immediately (I think the anise flavour permeates the cookies as they age).

• 1 lb unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup icing sugar
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/2 tsp anise oil (don't substitute anything else for this. If you can't find it, don't make it)
• 4.5 cups AP flour

Cream the butter, anise oil and egg yolks, then mix in the sugar, then the flour. Form into balls or finger shapes (my mom always used fingers to distinguish them from the pecan balls that my Aunt Jean made that looked almost the same). Cook 30-35 minutes at 300°F. Cool on racks over parchment paper. When cool, dust generously with icing sugar. Make sure they are cool or you'll melt the sugar and miss the roof of your mouth experience. Also, don't inhale while biting the cookie or you could get a lungful of icing sugar! 

Lemon Butter Tarts

These are a year round favourite. But at Christmas we can usually get Meyer Lemons and that makes them especially amazing! You make the filling ahead and keep it in the fridge. Then you bake the tart shells as you need them and fill them just before serving. Otherwise, the shells get soggy. Don't worry about leftover tarts; there won't be any. 

• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 cups sugar
• grate the rind of 3 lemons (about 5 tsp - make sure you wash the lemons before grating them)
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter

Combine in a double boiler. I don't have one so I put a stainless steel mixing bowl over a pot of water. Make sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl. Stir constantly with a wire whisk until thick (about 10 minutes). Cool, cover tightly and store in the fridge. You can make your own tart shells with the pastry recipe on this blog or buy Tenderflake premade shells. The star of the show is the filling so it isn't crucial to make your own. I suggest you make the smallest shells possible as the filling is beautifully rich.

Cuccidati
We always called these "goochiladedi" or "goochies". We didn't speak Sicilian at home and neither did my parents so this was clearly a misremembered pronunciation of "cuccidati" although we didn't find that out until just a few years ago. But these fruit filled cookies were the sign that Christmas was indeed coming and I suppose was our Sicilian substitute for traditional Christmas cake. To be honest, as a child, I didn't really like them much. I preferred the other goodies. But as my tastes expanded, I grew to admire and even like the richness of these cookies. Some people put food colouring in the sugar glaze, but I prefer mine white with a few sprinkles for colour.

Here is my mom's recipe

And here is my Aunt Jean's recipe

Today, we used my Aunt Jean's Pastry recipe (I figured out why she wrote one half plus one third cup Crisco instead of 5/6 cup. That's the way it was written on the box of Crisco!). We used a modified version of my mom's filling that went like this (with a little help from Cooking with Nonna) 

1 lb. dried figs (don't forget to remove the hard stems - just pull them off)

1 cup pecans

1/2 lb. glazed mixed fruit

1/2 lb. raisins (Thompson or Sultana - whichever you like best)

1/2 lb. dates

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp freshly ground cloves

1/4 cup honey

Grated peel of 2 tangerines

1/4 cup whiskey

1/4 cup rum

1/4 cup brandy

a half bottle of maraschino cherries with a little of the juice

A couple of handfuls of dried apricots

A couple of handfuls of dried cranberries

Put all of this (except the glazed mixed fruit) into a food processor with the blade attachment. Don't put it all in at once. Mine took 3 or 4 loads. Pulse until it looks the way you want. Add the glazed mixed fruit. Mix well with a spatula and put aside. 

Make the dough using the recipe you like. As I said, we used my Aunt's version and it was tender and delicious. Chill this dough for an hour before you roll it out. When chilling the dough, make 5 or 6 pieces and flatten by hand. This makes rolling easier. When chilled roll the dough until it is about 1/8" thick and use a cookie cutter (I used a wine glass) that is about 4" in diameter. Preheat the over to 375°F, line a cookie sheet with parchment and begin the assembly. About 1 tbsp of filling should be enough. Place a second circle of dough on top and seal around the bottom. The dough recipe made 36 cookies (72 circles) and there was enough filling left for at least another full batch. Bake for 15 minutes or until the bottoms begin to brown. Cool on wire racks and finish when cool with vanilla icing and coloured sprinkles. 

And the final version looked like this. 

Sicilian Meatball Cookies
I saw a post on Cooking with Nonna and it reminded me of these cookies my mom used to make. They taste of chocolate but have a wonderful spicy taste mainly due to the cloves and other spices. They make the house smell wonderful! Here is a link to her site with the recipe
Here is what mine look like: