Canadian-Traveler

The Dough
It isn't really gettin' Christmas without Christmas Cookies.
In the past we always received "Care-parcels" from Germany, but since International Postage has gone through the roof, and after last year's disappearance of two parcels during a famous U.S. winter storm our European cookie-providers have given it up. (I'd like to know which dude ate our christmas cookies)


So what else can I do but baking our own cookies?  So after consulting with the Internet, I found mother's recipe for "Schmalzplätzchen", a culinary special with which I would have refused to grow up without.


I did not say it was HEALTHY. And that's because they are made with pure lard. There are places on earth where lard won't be available. Norway was one of them. But here, close to the Mexican border lard can be found in any store. Mexicans seem to know what's tasty and what's not.


If i close my eyes I can see mother standing at the kitchen table, baking Schmalzplätzchen. She always managed to fill two huge containers with them. One for the chocolate version, the other for the vanilla version. We knew where these were kept and when mom was gone shopping groceries, we climbed a kitchen chair and got to the cookie containers. She should have kept a padlock on it.


Baking was one of the main Pre-Christmas occupations in my parent's household. We always made sure that we kids happened to drop into the kitchen when mom was in the baking department. When the dough had left the bowl, the bowl had to be "cleaned out". And we were eager enough to help with that. I can even remember that mom had to make a middle line through the remaining dough in the bowl. My brother would get one half, and I the other.
Whoever scraped the spoon across the border line was liable to incite a war.
Telling this to Bea she exclaimed: It was the same with me and my brother.


There you go!  Siblings can be cruel.


If you are looking for the recipe go to Bea's blog!


Now, I'm looking foward to coffee time. 


Stay alert!




And thanks for looking at my Cookies!