Festive Cookies

Holiday memories are often baked right into the recipes we make. Some are so special we wouldn’t think of heading into the holiday season without baking up a batch!

Our sense of smell is hardwired into our earliest memories. Just a whiff of butter and sugar caramelizing in the oven can take us back home, back to childhood, back to holidays past. Just about everyone grew up with a special cookie on the holiday table, from shortbread to gingerbread to rugelach. Leaving a snack out for a special visitor on Christmas Eve; wrapping up a box of shortbreads to give to a friend; sharing a plateful as you watch the umpteenth screening of Love Actually – these are the recipes for great holiday memories.

We’ve asked three local personalities who are known for their charm, hospitality and love of food to tell us about childhood holiday memories and to share their treasured cookie recipes.

Norah Rogers – The Waring House, Prince Edward County

HOLIDAY MEMORY

Norah Rogers and her husband Christopher were among the first couples to grace the hospitality landscape in the County. They took ownership of The Waring House, a 19th century limestone home, in 1995, and over time added guestrooms, a cooking school, and even built a greenhouse for winter produce. Their focus always was – and still is – on good food. “We’re so lucky,” says Norah. “We’re sitting right in the middle of everything: wineries, cideries, breweries, distilleries and farmers.”

In Amelia’s Garden, the fine dining restaurant at the Waring House, pretty floral paintings done by Norah’s mother, Ruth Connell, create a sense of home. It’s plain to see that Norah’s mom was an artist, but was she also a baker? “Oh yes,” Norah says softly. “Mum was an artist in the kitchen as well.”

Norah grew up on a farm in Spencerville, just south of Ottawa. “Father grew almost everything we ate, including the Christmas turkey,” remembers Norah. “He was a turkey farmer, but he also grew all sorts of unusual things – garlic, peanuts, okra – and Mum was a full-time homemaker, and a great mum. Home cooking was a big part of my upbringing. She baked all our bread and all sorts of Christmas cookies – shortbread, ginger, spice.” The holiday sweet that left the fondest memory was the plum pudding, the recipe passed down from Norah’s great-great-grandmother who was from County Cork, Ireland.

“But this one – my Melting Oat Lace Cookies – I made for a holiday cookie exchange in the 1980s. I was looking for something different and it was a hit!”

Melting Oat Lace Cookies

“Buttery, rich, elegant, and very delicate! I found this recipe in a magazine decades ago and quite liked the idea. I adapted it to be a bit easier to work with. I love the simplicity of the recipe, and the beautifully indulgent results are worthy of any holiday table.”

Ingredients

½ cup butter
1 cup quick-cooking oats (not instant)
½ cup lightly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. milk
¼ tsp. salt
4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate

Directions

• Preheat oven to 325F.
• Grease or line with parchment 2 – 4 large cookie sheets and set aside.
• In a medium saucepan, melt butter; remove from heat and stir in the remaining ingredients except chocolate.
• Drop batter by level teaspoonfuls, 2-inches apart on the prepared cookie sheet and pat them with wet fingers to make even and thin.
• Bake for about 8 minutes or until lightly browned at the edges; remove from oven and let stand for a minute; then carefully remove to flat surface to cool. Repeat with remaining batter. When all cookies are made, set aside. These cookies are super thin and fragile and need to be handled with care.
• Add chocolate to a double boiler or bowl over a bain-marie and melt chocolate over hot, but not boiling water. When melted, use a teaspoon to spread the back of one cookie with a nice dollop of melted chocolate, and sandwich it with a second cookie. Do each cookie one at a time so the chocolate is hot enough to “glue” the two cookies together. Repeat with the remaining cookies and chocolate.
• Store the finished cookies in an airtight container in the refrigerator or freezer. Can be frozen up to three months.

Yield: 20 – 24 sandwich cookies.

Mark Pollard – Sprucewood Handmade Cookie Co., Cobourg

HOLIDAY MEMORY

Mark Pollard’s cookie adventures started 25 years ago, when he was a caterer and event planner. His savoury cocktail cheddar cheese shortbread cookies were so loved by his event guests, well, he basically had no choice but to put them into boxes to sell. What started as one spectacular cookie has grown into a line of four savoury, five sweet, and several seasonal variations on that original buttery shortbread, and a fabulous new retail location. And his cookies are still crafted by hand, every day, from the purest ingredients he can find.

“Let’s face facts here: everybody’s Grandma’s shortbread recipe is the very best anywhere!” smiles Mark. “This recipe is for an almond crescent shortbread cookie first made by my grandmother’s mother, so I am told. I still have her old recipe card and it calls for 25 cents worth of vanilla bean!”

Good luck finding that! We’ve translated that to two whole vanilla beans, which will cost far more than a quarter!

“Name one kid who sleeps on Christmas Eve! I sure never did! I was the guy observing my parents from the top of the stairs each year, watching the stockings being filled, the race car track being assembled; but it wasn’t really about the gifts, it was about those cookies left out for Santa. Three cookies were put out on a china plate, one each for Santa, Mrs. Claus and Rudolph. From the top of the stairs, I waited patiently for my giggling parents – under the influence of “Christmas cheer” – to finish Santa’s work and get to bed. One particular year, I had to go to the bathroom so badly, I mean, I’d been sitting there for four hours, eyes still fixed on those three cookies. I raced down the hall to the bathroom, then silently tiptoed back to my observation spot to see the cookies were gone! Was there really a Santa after all? Disappointed, I returned to my room, only to find Sam, our black Lab, licking sugar off his paws!”

Vanilla Crescent Shortbread

This is the cookie that brings back a ton of memories for me – each and every year! It is the most fragrant of all shortbreads because of the whole vanilla beans which emit some fine pure vanilla essence.

Ingredients

3 ¾ cups superfine or fruit sugar
2 vanilla beans
1 lb. room temperature butter (soft, but not greasy)
2 cups ground blanched almonds (almond flour)
¼ cup sugar
4 – 5 cups of flour; add a bit at a time

Directions

• Into a jar with a tightly fitting lid, add the superfine sugar and vanilla beans; set aside for 10 days. Give the jar a shake every few days.
• On baking day, preheat oven to 325F.
• Line a couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper; set aside.
• Into a large bowl, add butter, almond flour, ¼ cup sugar, 4 cups of the flour to a large bowl and combine by hand. The dough likes to be worked; add more flour bit by bit until the dough is not sticky but not cracking either.
• Roll dough out onto a lightly floured surface about ½ inch thick, cut into crescents and arrange on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.
• Bake for about 45 minutes; cookies should still be pale. Roll in vanilla sugar while still hot.

Yield: approximately 3 dozen

Paul Dinkel – Dinkel’s, Belleville

HOLIDAY MEMORY

The beloved host of Dinkels in Belleville, Paul Dinkel brought his charm and talent to Canada decades ago. “In the fall of 1966,” recalls Paul. “After I finished three years as an apprentice baker and pastry chef in Switzerland, I arrived in Canada, and two days later I was hired by the Four Seasons Inn on the Park in Toronto.” It was a wonderful stepping stone for a young chef. The rest, as they say, is culinary history.

“My mother and grandmother were my inspirations for baking, and the delicate taste and sweet aroma of their freshly baked goods got me hooked at an early age,” says Paul. “If you grow up with the smell of fresh bread, vegetables, butter, milk, eggs, cheese, honey and fruits – home-grown or directly from the farmer – you will search for those aromas for the rest of your life.

“My mother loved baking and having family and friends over for afternoon coffee or tea, and maybe an open fruit flan. Cherries were often on the table because we had lots of trees, but also pears, apples, plums, and on a good day, apricots! My grandmother baked the best farmer’s bread – of course with fresh wholesome milk – in the wood oven, and when we visited her, she would cut a slice and slather it with her homemade butter and honey – mmm!”

Spitzbuben

“Growing up near Basel in the cherry valley, one of my favourite cookies was the Basler Läckerli made with honey, hazelnuts, almonds, candied peel and of course, kirsch, a brandy made from cherries. But, of the cookies we had at Christmas – anise, Linzer, bird’s nest, nutcorners, lebkuchen, amaretti – I’m sharing my recipe for spitzbuben. This Swiss cookie – with a cheeky name that translates to “mischievous boy” – is a traditional sandwich cookie filled with raspberry or apricot jam. It’s delicious and looks adorable.”

Ingredients

2 cups butter
2 ½ cups sugar
8 cups all purpose flour
1/8 tsp. salt
8 tsp. baking powder
4 eggs
Finely minced zest of 2 lemons
2 tbsp. vanilla essence
Icing sugar for dusting

Directions

• In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
• Continue mixing and add eggs one at a time, fully incorporating each egg before adding the next one.
• Blend in the lemon zest and vanilla; set aside.
• In a separate large bowl, sift together the flour, salt and baking powder.
• Begin adding the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, a small amount at a time until smooth. When fully combined, divide into 4 to 6 pieces, flatten, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 3 hours to overnight.
• When ready to bake, line cookie sheets with parchment paper and preheat oven to 325F.
• Onto a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to about ¼-inch thick, one piece at a time. Leave the rest in the fridge, as the dough will soften quickly. Use a cookie cutter in either a flower, star or heart shape. Arrange on lined cookie sheet – well spaced – and bake for 8 – 10 minutes. Do not let cookies brown.
• For the next chunk of dough, roll and cut as with the first batch, but these ones will be the top cookie, so use a small cutter to make a “window” in the centre for the jam to peek through. Bake, and when cooled, dust them with icing sugar.
• To each of the bottom cookies add a dollop of your favorite jam then sandwich the sugar-dusted cookies on top.

Yield: approximately 10 dozen depending on size of cookie cutter