"Snowflake"
These cookies were the highlight of the Christmas season when I was a child.
Not because they produced exciting shapes or required special creativity in the decoration, the reason was much more mundane: the dough simply tasted the best.
When I tried to bake this favorite recipe a few decades later in the middle of the pandemic, I discovered why this dough was so tempting: it consists only of sugar, butter and starch (flour).
That sounds simple, but it has a few pitfalls in implementation that I had missed as a child - my help with baking was apparently limited to snacking.
The recipe provides:
250 g butter,
100 g powdered sugar
60 g flour
250 g cornstarch
if you like, you can add 100 g of grated chocolate
The butter should be at room temperature so that it can be mixed with the sugar. Then gradually add the flour mixed with cornstarch (and possibly the chocolate) and knead well. Shape the dough into small balls and place on a baking sheet. From here on it can get tricky.
Over the years it has been shown that the balls on the sheet should have at least twice their size in distance between them, because under certain circumstances they are so wide that you have to cut the cookies apart at the end. You should also flatten it lightly with a fork for the best result. But the opening is not the biggest problem. These biscuits are very fragile when they are hot, which is what earned them the nickname “snowflakes” for my mother, because if you don't handle them carefully, they break up just as quickly as frozen water crystals. Therefore, you have to remove them from the tin with a flat spatula (and a sure instinct) and let them cool on a flat plate.
Incidentally, my mother's old cookbook with GDR recipes doesn't specify the baking time or length (was there simply a standard setting for cookies on GDR stoves? Did the polytechnical training also include baking temperatures as standard?).
All that was left for me was experimentation;
A baking time of 20 to 25 minutes at 170 degrees has proven itself.
Then this buttery sugar sin turns out perfectly.
Maria Wiesner
Eyes of an Angel
I ring in the Christmas season with angelic eyes.
Made quickly - and a delight for the palate thanks to the different jam filling.
When I was about eight years old, I baked these cookies for the first time at my “borrowed” grandma.
She was a good friend of the family and always invited us children to Advent baking - including a flour fight and lots of fun.
You need:
250 g wheat flour
150 g cold butter or margarine, cold and cut into cubes
70 g powdered sugar
2 egg yolks
1 pack of vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon lemon peel
1 pinch of salt
100 g jam or jelly (strawberries or currants are particularly good)