A Festive Cookie

It is week 3 of my Christmas cookie extravaganza. This week’s cookie is my personal classic, one you may not have heard of.

I must have been a teen-ager when I was going through Mom’s cookbook drawer one year. In addition to her red checkered Better Homes and Gardens spiral bound cookbook, she had a bunch of thin cookbooks with only a dozen or so yellowed pages. I think a lot of them were put out by Gold Medal flour or GW sugar or C&H sugar and also by the UW Extension. Even though I can see them clear as the nose on my face, I can’t conjure up what their titles were.

Anyway, one of these cookbooks was devoted to Christmas cookies. I picked out a recipe that looked the easiest, asked Mom if she could buy me some pecans, and baked up a batch.

They were always one of Dad’s favorites because he said they reminded him of Marzipan. To make him really happy, I would try shaping them into various fruits, just like Marzipan. A few years later, when I ate real Marzipan for the first time, I was like – yuck – this is nothing like my Christmas Balls. Perhaps Dad had just been trying to make me feel special, or perhaps the Marzipan he remembered from Germany, because they were poor, was more like these cookies, than the almond-paste candy.

I’ve never seen this recipe anywhere else. They are similar to Mexican wedding cakes, but made with white sugar instead of powdered sugar and not as crisp. And they look a lot more festive.  In any case, here’s my recipe.

1 cup margarine

2 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup sugar

2 tsp water

2 cups flour

1 cup chopped walnuts (the original recipe called for pecans, but I generally am too cheap to buy them)

Mix all ingredients well. The dough will be solid and thick, if that makes sense. Shape into balls. Once again I use my Pampered Chef scoop, this time the smallest one. Roll in colored sugar. Push into different shapes if desired and you are artsy. Bake at 325 for 20 minutes. Remove from the pans as soon as they come out of the oven or the sugar will stick to the pans. Freezes well. And you’ll need to freeze them or they will disappear on you before Christmas.

Have fun with them and make them in different shapes and colors.   

Can you pick out the bananas? 

These were supposed to be strawberries and apples. Can you tell the difference? 

I even made Green Bay Packer ones for the Hubby. The Wisconsin Badgers ones didn't show up as well because the white sugar gets overpowered by the red.