Baking

When I was growing up my family focused on one type of Christmas cookie, called "Christmas cookies." The note at the top of the recipe card says that it was from my grandmother Louise's grandmother Louisa. Unofficially, I think I remember Grandma saying that the recipe was even older than that and had come over with the family from Germany. It was a very secret recipe. Grandma used to make the dough and bring it to us to cut, decorate, and cook.

E's family went for an assortment of cookies. I think the first time I went to his house for Christmas they had: lefse, krumkake, meringues, frango mints, mint brownies, and peanut butter kiss cookies. I'm probably forgetting something.

So we do things E's way with an assortment of cookies heavily weighted toward Christmas cookies and krumkake. I've already written about how the assortment has to be different this year. But I have been surprised to find some more things not easily available here like mint extract, food coloring, colored sugar, vanilla extract, etc.



Yesterday was a half day of school so I had planned to bake cookies with the kids. The apartment has cookie cutters and I thought I had seen colored sugar for sprinkling on top. There was no sugar, though,  so we waited for E to stop by the store on his way home. What I had thought was sugar turned out to be a mystery box of things that Swiss people must be surprised to find missing at an American grocery store.

So obviously E didn't get any sugar and there we were with the dough, not sure what to do. A quick internet search showed us that the closest we were likely to get in Zurich were jimmies or edible glitter. E suggested regular sugar, which is no good because the crystals are smaller and will melt when the cookie cooks. But the cookie really does need the sugar on top for looks and taste. Finally, because we really wanted to eat cookies we made a test batch with regular sugar. And they worked! The white sugar is pretty subtle in terms of looks, and not so much fun to put on, but the cookies tasted very close to right. We have a theory on why it worked. The cookie cutters here are very small (maybe because the traditional cookies here seem to be thick?). We think the little cookies cooked fast enough that most of the sugar didn't melt. I don't know if that is scientifically likely, but E didn't bother to correct me, which means it is either possible or so ridiculous he thought I was kidding.

So it looks like in the end we will have the following cookies: Christmas cookies, peanut butter cookies, orange cookies, rob roys, mint brownies (somehow), and caramels.

Here is a list of funny cookie cutters we have: several sizes mushroom, mountain silhouette, malnourished horse, star of David (if you google swiss Christmas cookies, you will see this is a popular shape), old man with walking stick, tiny rooster, dinosaurs, and mountain hut. The mountain hut cutter made us all reminisce about our rescue.

Actually, here is a photo of fat star of David cookies from newlyswissed.com, which is a fun and informative website that I use all the time! It even has articles about the turnip festival and the tv series Les Suisses, which I have been taping.